The Smoke And Who's Still Standing When It Clears

New Life

2012-01-23T09:43:00.000-08:00

Two weeks in, and I've had time to start working on a routine. Here's what I do in the new world:

Monday and Wednesday mornings I ride with the sis-in-love to the library, where she volunteers. I work on as much on-line writing as possible (you'll see why in a moment) and browse books;
Tuesdays and Thursdays I walk to the library, two and a half miles, a mile of that without sidewalks. I've written about that elsewhere;
Wi-fi and cell phone service in this area are about par with Northwest Ohio. I cannot get cell phone service in the Cove save for about an 18-inch square on my bed (which I am threatening to mark off with police chalk). If I need to have a long conversation, I save it for when I'm at the library, and I call them outside in the picnic area. My brother has wi-fi, but it isn't compatible with my Apple products, so if I want to get on-line in the apartment I have to use my 1 GB HP netbook and get on when my sis-in-love isn't on, which is rare;
You'd think this reduced access would make me restless. Not so much...I like not having the pressure of selling myself on-line 24/7. It only irritates the crap out of me when I'm trying to do my new job, or wanting to listen to something on Spotify;
Fridays I stay home and do laundry, vacuum Bob the Cat fuzz out of rugs and furniture, take out the recycling and trash, clean the stove, and generally revamp the world I live in. I also do the dishes daily and keep my bathroom clean;
Food.

Um, that last one requires a bit of narrative. Bear with me--it's got a hopeful ending.

My brother and sis-in-love have created a distribution of the bills and groceries so that she could do go this lengthy amount of time without working. (I should mention here that S does volunteer--Mondays and Wednesdays at the library, Tuesdays and Thursdays with the City of Carlsbad, and Fridays at the Senior Center. This is commendable, but she doesn't job hunt much. After being here two weeks I can almost see why if she limits herself to Carlsbad, but there are jobs in San Diego, many of which I have sent out feelers on.) This distribution of bills is a compromise that puts the majority of the weight on my brother. Keep in mind that S owns a property in Fresno and doesn't rent it out (although they are looking into that option).

This is a wary subject for me because technically they didn't have to take me in. My brother offered, though, and the other option was to discontinue existence, so I can't say that this is such a bad option. However, I don't know if everyone involved was onboard with the solution when it was offered. Needless to say, when you're suicidal you don't want to hear how much you are costing one member of the party. There were no outright statements--just how expensive everything is. I starved myself for about four days trying to avoid the lectures, and then found out that regardless of how little I ate it was still too much. There is nothing worse than being hungry, depressed, and a burden.

A friend from San Francisco sent me a care package, and she can't much afford it. Someday, when I have more money than a five dollar bill in my wallet, I'll find a way to repay her. But something else happened after those four days--something shifted in me. The mace-faced girl who used to work in Oakland kicked in and sat back and watched the dynamic. For you see, S does this penny-pinching with my brother, too. And while I don't want to interfere with their dynamic, I know that I have to find a way to let the miser-umbrella wash away. So I'm eating again. And no, I'm not stuffing myself to be obstinate. I'm just eating enough to survive.

Which is only what I deserve.

Fuel. To write on.

So This Guy Falls Into a Hole, See

2012-01-17T09:56:00.000-08:00

There’s great writing and there’s hokiness and what I’m about to relate will probably fall into the second category.

It’s still a great story, though.

One of my favorite television shows of all time, no secret, is “West Wing.” The second season’s Christmas episode is one of my favorites of the series: Deputy Chief of Staff Josh Lymon is suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and has to see a shrink when he starts breaking things in private, but on purpose. His direct supervisor, Chief of Staff Leo McGarry, meets Josh after the session, bathed in the Christmas lights in the lobby. Josh is on his way to recovery but embarrassed at his own behavior, and Leo, who is a recovering addict, tells Josh a story. I’ll paraphrase.

So this guy is walking down the street and falls into a hole. He begs people who pass by to help him out, but none of them can seem to help him. They throw all kinds of junk down into the hole that don’t help the situation.

Then his friend sees him in the hole and jumps in. “What are you, crazy?” asks the first guy. “Now we’re both down here.” “Yeah,” answers his friend, “but I’ve been here before, and I know how to get out.”

I don’t know what made me think of that.

*****

I am probably writing the most that I have ever written in my life since college; even more than this past spring when I quit, even more than NaNoWriMo. The writing grounds me. While my family rots in front of video games, television, and web surfing, I pull up to my typing table and push the pen across the page, or compose blogs and reviews. All of it, all of those words, are written for me. I could tell the world I’m lonely, like a dried bone along the road, and I could express it in half a dozen status messages and posts and tweets but it would fall into the abyss and never hit bottom. So I write for me.

This weekend it began to rain. I was so lonely that I just sat and listened to it after the television had been stilled. The rain sounded like a friend, whispering secrets in the dark, telling me to listen, shut up and listen, Jo. I finished reading a book this weekend and moved about my room, restless for a story to soothe myself. I found that what I wanted I could write.

This past summer I met a vacationing writer from Leeds, England who made friends with me immediately, no questions asked. There seems to be no way to scare her off, regardless of what I write. She likes my blog “Notes From Sea Level.” I love her taste in books (Armistead Maupin), artwork (photos, sculpture, and pottery), and travel (she loves my City as much as I do). She knows I am missing my writing groups, and she wants to stay accountable to her writing. So every other day or so we meet on Facebook, call the gunshot from the horse-race, write like fiends for 90 minutes, and get back on Facebook to check in.

By the end of each session I’m FLYING. But then, I’m writing the book I would read to heal right now.

Write on.

The Reason I (Am) Here

2011-12-21T05:12:00.000-08:00

(Yes, this lovely little ditty is showing up at 5 am. I wake up at weird hours and use the time to write. The fun side of being a creative.)

Present and future tense. I've snatched at it lately, like music. I am here. I have a reason to be here. When I get married. It's shadings like this that make a girl hopeful.

I'm working on my novel more and more right now; with the holidays the job search and inquiries can pretty much be wrapped up in 90 minutes a day and then I sit down and work on being productive, in any sense possible. I blog about customer service finds and frustrations. I read. I write on what I read. And then I work on the novel.

My character in the novel is a woman with a lot of similarities to me. She's a baseball fan. She works in an industrial setting. She suffers a workplace injury. She spends about 60 percent of her free time alone, and, in the off-season, 100 percent of her free time alone. (To be fair, she has differences from me as well. She doesn't think women should play professional baseball. She's thin. She's of Irish descent. She has no siblings. She's not a writer and she doesn't read fiction.)

The one aspect of her that is easiest to write is her solitude. My protagonist is the definition of "If a tree falls in the woods and there's no one there to hear it, does it make a sound?" For some odd reason, I always think of Isak Dinesen's accounts of Africa when I think of that phrase..."will Africa remember me?" Was I really here? At several points in the novel the protagonist does the incredible--she has batting practice with the San Francisco Giants before each of their home games, for FOUR YEARS. As they say on the social networks these days, "Pictures or it didn't really happen." But she agreed not to take pictures. She agreed not to tell anyone. And her love for the men she plays with is strong enough that when another character asks, "How am I supposed to believe that? Why would I believe that?" her answer is, "Then don't." Alone, sitting on everyone else's more credible and documented side of the world, more people have doubted her, and contributed to her self-doubt, than these 25 men in a batting practice that she can't prove. They not only believe her life but they want to be part of it. Her loyalties lie with those who think she exists, and who acknowledge her existence.

I often wonder if I exist, living as solitary as I do. Social networking responses to my work often shock me not for their content but for their appearance. I was speaking with a friend yesterday about this, and he was patient and kind enough to explain why it was so rare to connect with others on social networks, and what other factors are involved when the tree falls. He didn't lecture, he didn't instruct, he just posed considerations. There's a small chance I'm heard. There's a minute or no chance that I'm acknowledged, and I'm looking in the wrong place for that acknowledgment. It was good to have that kind of weighing in, and then go to writing group afterword, where others were grateful that I had hosted the group and made them comfortable. I could see my contribution to the world reflected back for an afternoon. There IS a reason that I AM here.

Present tense.

I hear leaves rustling in the forest. :)

Twenty Pigeons, Twenty Doves

2011-12-13T06:06:00.000-08:00

Art in Afghanistan was a moot point for years during the rule of the Taliban, but recently journalists have been returning to the country to find recovery in the form of art. I recently listened to a writer on the voyeuristic program "The Moth" who had traveled to Afghanistan in search of art, any art, and he was told by government officials and liaisons that there was no art in Afghanistan, still, and he decided to wander among the people to see for himself.

This writer had a history of depression, and he commented, to the amusement of the audience, that Afghanistan was probably not the best place to go if you suffer from depression. Still, the story was one of progression and discovery; he told of finding painters who were hired to paint over people in the museum portraits, musicians silenced, poets invisible in burqas. The painters who covered the portraits came back after the liberation with water and soft cloths and uncovered the paint. The poets still wear burqas because they would feel exposed if they removed them, and they liked finding stories in what Harry Potter tried on for those of us in the western cultures, the invisibility cloaks. And the musicians dug their instruments out of piles of kindling and played from practiced dreams. One man was asked, "Didn't you go crazy, not having any music, or not knowing when you would have music again?" The man answered, "I thought I might...but then I went to the market, and bought twenty pigeons and twenty doves, and that was my music." His house was "a mess," told the writer, but he had music, any form of music.

A writer, a creative, looks for the smallest thing to stay alive. I can't say that I'd buy the birds. But I already have a burqa--not one of cloth, but one of network. I am invisible. If stories be found there, then I should be able to rival Joyce.

Listen.

Write on.

John Doe No. 24

2011-11-20T23:09:00.001-08:00

The other night, just before leaving for my current location, I remembered that two musical artists have the power to soothe me: Mary Chapin Carpenter, and Bruce Springsteen. Bruce comes up in the playlist a lot, but Mary doesn't, so I pulled up YouTube and played. Two of my favorites seemed relatable that night--"Quittin' Time" and "John Doe No. 24"--and I'll get back to "Quittin' Time" in a moment.

In the song Mary fictionalizes a true account of a past inmate of the Illinois Department Health and Human Services institution next to the Mississippi. John Doe was a special case if only for the fact that he arrived at the institution not able to see, hear or speak. He was designated No. 24 because he was the 24th person to be recorded in the system as unidentifiable. Mary wrote her song from the point of view of John, what he would say if he could communicate.

Like John, I feel that I can't connect either...that my heart's desire of communication and connection and engagement will never be achieved.

While I drew breath no one missed meAnd they won't on the day that I ceasePut a sprig of crepe jasmine with meTo remind me of New Orleans...

*****
"Quittin' Time" in its original form is a rollicking song that you could dance to if you wanted...I've sang it at karaoke, to be honest. Mary has two versions, the original and a slow, "unplugged" (thank you Eric Clapton for all of time), acoustic version. On the album "Party Doll" she sings the acoustic, a live-to-tape recording. Apparently she and the band are recording it at somewhere formal (someone smarter than me must know where), for she says as introduction: "We are dressed very seriously tonight, but, don't worry--we're available to cater your next affair."

Beautiful voice, that.

Hey, babe, tell me what we're gonna do...

When I left my employer over seven months ago I had no plan, and that was the plan. I was pretty much dead, pretty much numb, and I had spent four years working for a company that contributed to me feeling like a temp every day of my life. I tried to embed myself, thinking creating any family, even one that would suck me dry, was better than having no family at all, so I baked stuff, bought stuff, worked for days straight instead of hours, kept my employees' secrets, kept a few of my own. In March I saw the writing on the wall and what would be happening next if I stayed and I could not stay for it. I knew that I would die if I stayed.

It's gettin' crazy, and I need some help from you...We were so connected that you were a part of me.Now, I feel an emptiness right to the heart of me...

So I left. I learned how to finally write the rough drafts of short stories, learn how to lead writing groups, and settled into looking for a job where I could teach and coach and analyze to promote in June. For six months, I have been looking for a job. I always thought I would get hired outright, because I had never freelanced before. I didn't find anything. I burned through savings, retirement, took loans out against my life insurance, and tried to take another loan out last week. My brother is loaning me December's rent. I have no idea how to freelance and didn't even think of it myself until last Tuesday. I had to max out my last two credit cards to get enough money to cover a doctor's appointment on the 30th, where tests will probably reveal that I have either Crohn's disease or colitis. I have $33.85 in my wallet for food for December and I had to admit publicly in someone else's blog comment stream that I am, in fact, too stupid to live.

But you pretend and I pretendThat everything is fineAnd though we should be at an endIt's so hard admittin' that it's quittin' time

The "s" word isn't so much a factor these days for the misery side, but, rather, the following reasons:

I'm not able to support myself;
If I move in with my brother, I will have no transportation to support myself if I do find a job in this car culture;
I would be a bleed on my brother's bank account without supporting myself;
There are SO...MANY...PEOPLE...ALREADY. The world would be lighter without me, less strained, and allow for more resources for others;
I suck as a writer.

Please don't hate me, this feeling just won't go away...Now, we're spending all of our time caught in a fantasy...

I would rather stick around. But there doesn't seem to be a reason for my existence, and every argument for me to cease to be here. It's time to pay the only check I can...time to be practical. Time to make room for the rest of world.

And though we should be at an endIt's so hard admitting that it's quitting time.

Rain falls in Carlsbad, soft and spacious as an alto lullaby.

Ah, dear reader...

NaNoWriMo and Baseball's "Off" Season

2011-10-28T13:10:00.000-07:00

Just a quick program note, boys and girls: Yours truly is going to attempt National Novel Writing Month (commonly known as NaNoWriMo to the inside crowd) this year.

However, I have no intention of getting a novel done with this exercise. Instead, the focus is to learn the long-term habit of working on a novel daily. Some things, of course, will have to be compromised. Beginning Tuesday, November 1st, I will be in a more limited or non-extistant capacity in one or more of the following while I devote myself to my "baby":

Facebook
Foursquare
Twitter
Meetup
Blogger
Rotten Tomatoes
GoodReads
Email
Texting

I'm kidding on the last two...of COURSE I'll check those just as faithfully. (#Maybe #JustKidding)

Think of it as my maternity leave while I hatch this evil plan to win readers. Have a great Thanksgiving, all, and I'll catch you again in December.

If you missed this post, you can catch it again in its entirety here.

Write on.

The Knot, End of the Discussion (For Now)

2011-10-24T15:38:00.000-07:00

Whenever I experience a change in my own habits, I tend to panic. My subconscious says, "Nope, don't think so," and then I'm scrambling to figure out what the flip I really want, when what I really want I just established.

Since the advent of the novel, I have a problem: I don't really want to read. I can't wait to find out what happens next in my own story, so anything on-line, off-line, longer than a poem, smaller than a breadbox tends to be an obstacle. (Hell, blogging tends to be an obstacle. But I am here to record the truth of the matter, dear writer.) Shut up, world, and let me see what the protagonist does now.

I know why I want to shut off the outside and just write:

I'm afraid I'm going to lose this great story if I read someone else's;
I still have a whole bookcase of books not yet read.

Lack of work/life balance, that's all. I still need to read; if I wrapped myself up in my own work I would be operating with a sense of hubris that is relative to that of a Yankee player or Top Gun pilot. But by feeling this way about reading, I can come to a compromise; I no longer need to finish a book because I was dumb enough to buy it (even though it's bringing me down), and I no longer need to clean off a bookshelf in a month. I've read down the stack to the point that all of the books from the floor are gone, everything's properly shelved, and if I stop myself in the bookstore with "hey Jo, you have enough books and your own book at home" then I can curl up with a book and stop clocking in at one hundred pages a sitting.

Unless, I'm writing, that is.

I'm grateful to finally be picky, and grateful to have a novel, strangely enough. In the advent of no husband, no children, no pool and no pets, I'm grateful to have my version of a progeny, and one that I adore so freely, without having to learn about the subject matter from the ground up.

Write on.

Nobody Puts Baby in a Corner (Not Even Herself)

2011-10-16T12:09:00.000-07:00

Or, if you prefer continuity, "The Knot, Part Three."

I am torn by two similar but opposing views. Are we more deterred by the world around us? Or more deterred by the people who say we can't change the world around us and tell us to live in the parameters of what we see?

In a similar post this morning on Notes From Sea Level, I mentioned how refreshing it was to spend time with authors and journalists at the Bay Area literary festival Litquake. I found it refreshing because these artists were optimistic in the face of the world, innovative in the face of the world, instead of just showing readers and audiences how shitty the world is in new ways. For me, it was the difference between being stuck in a cave with a candle and matches and giving them a try vs. being stuck in a cave with candle and matches and being told you don't have enough oxygen for the flame. You'd have to test it, I suppose. You'd have to take the risk.

It's easy to believe in the lack of oxygen. My father did. My mother kept lighting candles.

My father was considered to be the "smart" one, by the way, and my mother the compassionate one.

Two nights a week I supply other writers with candles and matches and tell them that while I don't know the way out either, I'm happy to keep lighting candles with them. Writing on this inspiration that I received this week so gratefully, I thought about my recent relations with the Internet, our separation, our supposedly healthy distance. Did my mother develop a healthy distance from the gardens when she was frustrated? Not really. Sure, to keep with the metaphor, there is a burning of the candle at both ends I suppose, but she would have been lost without her "babies," as she called the little shoots pushing out of the ground. Her biggest mental deterioration was when she could no longer walk out to the gardens. The Internet, like her gardens, is my cave, and the damn naysayers are saying you'll never get out with a candle and matches.

I believed them until Litquake, and on Friday with my thoughts on the ineptitude of UPS. I spread my own version of "There's no oxygen, so get used to it" on the Internet. I fed off of the fact that others had the same problem. MORE. BAD. NEWS. Except this time, I contributed. No candles. Sitting in the dark, waiting for proof that there is oxygen, when, well, I'm breathing. Need oxygen for that, I would think.

I could perpetuate the bad news, because that's what the world is addicted to, that's what people would read, and since I can't seem to learn that, then people insist on telling me. But I'm thinking it would be SO MUCH HEALTHIER for me (and maybe the world at large?) to write something that would uplift me, in the face of the world. Using my smarts to find a compassionate way out of here. I can't change the cave, I don't know where the exit is, but I can refuse to believe that I can't say something hopeful myself, even if optimism isn't "smart." That's the best way for me to enjoy the cave exploration, and maybe give others light as well.

Write on.

That'll Learn Ya

2011-10-12T22:21:00.000-07:00

Talked back to the Internet tonight. Feel like a relapsed drunk. Feel like a wild bird who's beat itself to death in a cage, missing feathers, covered in bruises.

Argh.

Just listen, Jo. Just listen.

That'll be easy tomorrow...going out exploring. Stow the phone, watch the world.

Write on.

The Knot, Part Two

2011-10-09T22:36:00.000-07:00

Feeling about ten times better about my life and my writing these days. I'm adding a very simple and very difficult lesson to every session with my ex, the Internet, and it seems to be working. Here's the process:

Don't avoid the Internet, but don't court it, either. Which means I am spending a LOT less time with it
When I do meet with Internet, I just listen. All good therapy starts with listening. I don't talk back much
When I do meet with Internet, I listen without experiencing everything as a personal insult or a reason for me to change. I just listen, without changing my stripes every fourteen feet and without getting defensive
Internet just IS

And then we've got what I do instead:

I took a radical new approach with my resume, and got an interview
I am just throwing myself into dates with Novel, who seems far less judgmental than Internet
I don't spend every waking minute with Novel, so that when Novel and I part ways we can say it was a good experience
I read books SO. MUCH. BETTER. I just sit there and relish them, swim in them, until my fingers get all pruney with someone else's poetry and stories
I have reduced my complaining by half. I'll never eliminate it--I catch myself complaining in my head, and then realize how much I sound like Andy Rooney after a while, and it's not my intention to sound like him

Yes, the kids (blogs) may suffer at first from my amicable break-up with Internet, and friends may forget me, but God, did you see that turn of phrase in the second-to-last sentence of my third chapter of Novel? Did you catch that cool breeze this morning in the Park? Did you hear the Blue Angels rock the Casbah on Thursday while you chewed on a coffee-soaked mint leaf from a little place by the ballpark?

I did. God, it was fun. And Internet seems to be healing just fine after our divorce.

Write on.

The Knot, Part One

2011-10-02T22:54:00.000-07:00

I'm going to take this in parts. It's easier to unravel one thread at a time.

Things you should know about my current mood:

Not the product of hormonal cycles. I have two weeks until that.
Not due to the weather. Sun's out.
Not due to money issues. Yet.
Not due to current events.

I have spent the weekend, and will probably continue to spend the coming week, trying to determine what causes it. I do know this much:

Whenever I walk away from the internet for entire days, the feeling abates.

And what is that feeling, you ask?

Loneliness
Hopelessness
Uselessness
Lack of ambition (on my part)
Lack of creativity (on my part)

Why do I pick on the internet? Because:

My relationship with the Internet/Social Network feels like I'm married to a Yankee shortstop
Said Spouse treats everyone else so well, and supports the kids (the "kids" here being my blogs) for free
Everyone else loves the Spouse for the money they make, the sexy look they have, and the way they can do EVERYTHING
Well, everything but create fulfillment.

Why doesn't the Internet/Social Network bring me happiness? After all, I explore all of the recommendations I get, I try all of the latest Network options, I follow all of the advice and check in at every interval possible. I worship and completely support the Internet/Social Network. Why do I feel like I'm one giant nervous tic, expecting my Virtual Spouse to fix "it?" I don't even know what "it" is.

And why, when I walk away and think for a whole weekend, do I feel like I might be normal again?

Someone needs to get an amicable divorce. I don't think counseling will work here.

Write on...while I call my lawyer.

Chicken Soup For Eleanor Rigby's Soul

2011-09-29T22:53:00.000-07:00

More and more events tell me to walk away. Use the laptop for finding a job and walk away from the rest of it.

This will not have a happy ending if you don't, Jo. It won't be if you do, either.

I love writing. Is there a way to write and save someone else's soul? Or am I the perpetual child, the one who saw an optical illusion in the media and started to protest a supposed mirage?

I have two default modes: humor and finding patterns in the cosmos. Both require a great deal of trust in myself. Trust erodes when pieces add up.

I don't think I need to walk away. I think I need to set up rules for my own internet use. And then walk away from what I don't understand and what makes me feel like Forrest Gump at the prom.

My anger is aimed at me, folks. This over-exposure to a media outlet that is not the solution is my fault for painting it to my mind as a box to fight my way out of. Read. Respond. The nature of the response is about to change.

And...

This guy saved my soul tonight. I'm not alone.

Write on.

Encrypted

2011-09-28T23:38:00.000-07:00

I've been carrying a Moleskine journal with me more and more lately, a soft companion with no rules. I clip a gel-writing pen to the cover, usually with some outlandishly-colored blood in its veins, and I sit in bars, coffee shops, bookstores (not for the faint of heart, that; staff may think you are writing in a book of theirs) and park benches, spilling the beans. I sometimes get out my BlackBerry and take pictures of the evidence, and put it on Foursquare for geographic reference or on Facebook with a fat cookie or cake piece to get comments...and I do get comments. For the sweets.

Rarely do I get compliments on Facebook for my writing. I'm starting to wonder if it's because I write in cursive, and if the friends who follow me on Facebook can read something that isn't a downloadable font.

I'm a minority in the pictures of this subject. I'm also a minority in my writing groups. Often in a group of three to fifteen people I am the only one going analog. I adore analog. I'm truly myself with analog, free to stumble, run, swim or fly over the pages.

Sometimes, though, the pages represent time wasted eternal to an outsider. "You go to so many writing group meetings," say non-writing friends, and even some fellow members. "Is your bedroom overflowing with filled journals?" No, but more because I am a slow writer, a careful writer, even in private. I got my very deliberate cursive from a strict teacher in the sixth grade, who told me my handwriting was awful (it was legible), and that if I made a concentrated effort to improve it, then I would be accepted into her special class for something called Calligraphy, where I could dip a pen in ink and create fancy letters like the ancients. Few kids bit at this bribe, but I was lonely enough then to bite at anything...sort of like I am lonely enough now to bite at any social networking site or technology just to find companionship. With the calligraphy class I learned to change my handwriting (my fifth-grade handwriting and my seventh-grade handwriting look like two different people--I'm lucky I didn't have to sign things at that age), and grip the pen with such worry that two things happen when I write:

You can't take my pen from me--the hand will come along for the ride;
I cramp up about a page in and can no longer feel my middle finger at the tip.

I have been told to loosen up by other teachers, physiological medical professionals, even psychiatrists. I've tried, but then the distinctive art is lost. I would rather be in pain and combative when it comes to my writing than relax and lose the picture.

Occasionally, someone will shock me and be on my side. I'm used to my handwriting, so the shock comes from seeing the beauty again from the outside. There's a cafe in North Beach in San Francisco that has fallen in love, collectively, with my pages--I have been known to get free drinks with my letters. I've written for charity without a laptop, contributing by the page, for the penmanship. And occasionally someone in the writing group will see me prepare for the session and their jaw will drop on the table. "That paper is unlined," they'll say, and point, as though I just hurled a submarine pitch and the ump called it fair. "How come you can do that and the paper is UNLINED?" Because I'm a freak, I think, but just smile to the inquisitor. My control issues work FOR me in this department.

This afternoon I was skimming my news feed through Twitter and found this, tucked in amongst the baseball stats, Kindle Fire announcements, and publication pointers. My favorite journal manufacturer is sponsoring a project to collect something that may be a lost art in just a few generations, and that art is HANDWRITING? You mean at some point someone is going to need a comparable Rosetta Stone to decipher me? You mean that I, the least hip person and probably not one of the smartest people on the face of the planet, is using something akin to Navajo spy messages or passing down an oral tradition in recipe?

Or code?

And all of the apathy toward my life from outsiders, all of the things I'm not smart enough to see and all of the things I have to keep up with to be published and "liked," were washed away. I have a gift. I have the writing equivalent of the knuckleball, long lost to pitchers because they can't maintain control of it. I can maintain control of it, in the knot between my fingernail and my hand. I have the ball at the seams, and I send the curves flying, so slowly that the page thinks it can be hit out of the park, still swinging at something lost in the tomorrows. Suddenly, I feel relevant, and...surprisingly precious to an unsuspecting world.

Write on...a lost art.

Post-less

2011-09-25T20:11:00.000-07:00

Another Sunday. The plan was stay inside, watch it rain, and catch up on reading. I did meet my reading goals, but there was no rain and I felt unjustifiably lazy.

Why would I take such a day? All of my days meld together now, lost in job searches and free-writing, trying not to write a novel that more than likely will be ridiculed. Does that stop me from writing around it, occasionally adding a sentence or two to it?

No.

Should it? Damned if I know. But there's a private part of me that feels relieved that my own story would make me this excited...whether I'm justified in that, or not.

Write on.

A Study

2011-09-18T22:05:00.000-07:00

So, stop me if you've heard this one.

Frustrated writer is tired of feeling around in the dark for a light switch. Resets focus with combination of new blog goals and emulating quest blogs from publications like The New Yorker magazine.

Yeah. Tired, right?

Still, it seems the best remedy for now...at least enough of a remedy to allow me to look forward to blogging again. I get tired of whining and look forward to an action plan. It's like a lesson plan for life, and we already know how much I miss college.

So narrowing focus point number one: resist writing from the point of resident expert blogging and commence writing from the point of view of quest blogging. Here's the difference, in travel blogging examples:

Resident expert: "When in San Francisco, you should go here, then there, then everywhere."
Quest literature: "Since living in San Francisco, I have gone here, but not there yet. Everywhere is on the list for me to visit. Here was foggy until 10:30 am..."

Make sense?

God knows I am NO RESIDENT EXPERT IN ANYTHING THAT ANY SANE PERSON SHOULD EMULATE UNDER ANY CONDITION. Hence, I'll go back to discovery.

Which, coincidentally, is my favorite motivation for writing. I just keep forgetting that fact in a world of sheep praying for shepherds.

I'll leave the expertise up to those shepherds. I've been known to read them myself.

Write on.

POP-u-lerr, Think of It As Personality Dialysis

2011-09-14T20:26:00.000-07:00

Yeah. I love musicals.

*****

Every Monday and Tuesday night, in some cafe in the City, me and a few of my closest fellow writers sit ourselves down, introduce ourselves, and then shut up for an hour and put our thoughts on paper. We sit mere feet from the tracks of the N Judah line, on opposite ends of it, clanging bells and espresso machines and the chef's choice of either jazz tunes or KFOG visions peppering our gumbo of thoughts. I am the one calling time so that the pens can fly and the keyboards click. I'm wired. I'm sitting with a band of writers and my last corporate mentor sits at the back of my brain and gives me a stern stare: "Show me your discipline, your focus."

I can't write a word.

Then I tell myself, "Free up, we'll keep it in the journal. You don't have to publish this one." And I don't publish yet another one. I don't share yet another set of words with the universe, either because I know it's not intelligent enough to warrant comments, or because the kind of comments it would generate would stump me. Or, worse, I would assault someone just by publishing the piece.

So my writing comes out in small, furious, tentative slivers, barely a wisp of smoke from where I'm standing.

I'm sitting waist deep in a river of writers and dying of fear of my own shadow. The Tea Party can publish treatises that would make Dick Cheney sing the Hallelujah chorus, but I'm afraid to ruffle feathers or lose the last of a few fragile friendships. I can't seem to comprehend a friend supporting me regardless of my opinion, and yet others who I haven't seen in twenty years could not only express a differing opinion but tell me that as a writer I shouldn't have missed on something so obvious, and I embrace their opinion. I don't consider any of my ideas mature enough to present, even when I've read all over the board on the subject matter and have written the resolve out in my mind. When no one else has presented my side of the argument, I see it as a miss on my part, not innovation. Hmm...if no one's invented the light bulb, it's because there's something wrong with wanting artificial light, right?

Then I explode with my opinion. Case in point, my post on another blog about the BART protests.

I opened up that post with fair warning--I was not going to respond to comments on that post. I was angry at two aspects of the world when I wrote that: a) I couldn't side with the sloppy, ineffective and reckless approach of the protesters; and b) I am probably the most inarticulate person on Earth. I love words, nuance, and a slew of other inconvenient aspects of literature so damn much that they stop me from being a good, and intelligent writer.

Not to say I can't learn. I apparently do not know how.

On a daily basis I come to the typewriter angry, and entirely at my own responsibility. I hold myself back until I explode, when I should be writing, should be falling, should be placing my foot squarely in my mouth, if for no other purpose than to learn. I need to learn that making mistakes and writing those mistakes gives me permission to get it right next time.

And by "right" I mean in my own voice. Not closer to the trend. Closer instead to authentic for me, and closer to what my perception is. If I don't trust the voice of my perception, then I am no better than those reviewers on Amazon and Yelp who are paid $5 a review to express praise they don't truly believe. I'm preparing a recipe in which I hate the smell of the primary ingredient. That could generate enough creative anger to last a (albeit shortened by stress) lifetime.

I realize I don't have to tear the door down with a battering ram. While my goal is not to be popular or safe in my approach, it's also not to shock readers just for the sake of shocking them. I'm no Madonna or Lady Gaga.

I have to write to discover. No matter how unpleasant the outcome is.

Lastly, and probably the most difficult part to learn, is what to do about the comments, or lack of them. I obviously have some unnatural phobia of apathy and criticism. I often want an honest discussion and end up getting silence, total and yet vague agreement, or incredulous disbelief that I could be so wrong. My growth opportunity is in embracing comments for whatever form they come in, even if the trolls, strike, or if the post generates no commentary at all. I need to strike boldly forward and have a self-discussion or self-critique ready, but not a self-censorship. I doubt that my readership will grow beyond what it is now, but just in case my self-censorship and consequential outbursts are what is limiting my readership, I have to make changes.

And I have to ask myself: do I want to be the resident expert, or do I want to be on a quest?

God, I love quests.

When To Let Go

2011-09-10T22:54:00.000-07:00

The baseball season is over.

Well, at least for me and the other die-hard Giants' fans.

The bandwagon fans will be completely gone again in a few more weeks. For those of us who will always wear the orange and black, this is a relief--with any luck, ticket prices next year will be reasonable. We have our reasons for heroes. The only thing left to endure is "Not so hot now, are you?"

Beating my head against a wall, I keep the common sense to myself, only to write it here...

People. The Giants were never hot. They were scrappy. And they weren't scrappy enough this year.

I'm good with that. But I'm also content that at this point, Bochy is pulling a Ohio State University coaching trick, only in reverse. Ohio State University coaches, two of them now, tend to put in their greener, second string if they are light years ahead of the opposition in the second half. It makes them look like good sports, their second string becomes deep, and they have a better team.

Bochy is operating on the same principle, in the reverse. He's losing, and losing so badly that he is using this time for "development." I won't see a lot of the same faces next year because Bochy needs a new hitting team. (He needs a new hitting coach, too--but I digress.) He's so far behind he can put in his second string and give them time to learn to be his hitting heroes. He's creating a deeper team than he has right now.

Which isn't hard, since these guys have nowhere to go but up.

*****

About a month ago I was in the shower, and I was happy when a story idea bloomed in my brain. What I wasn't happy about was that it was a story for a novel.

I guess it's a good development that I recognized it as a novel instead of trying to write it first. But I ground my teeth anyway...I'm just now getting the hang of writing short stories.

And a damn novel shows up. I haven't even published a short story, or even submitted one.

So I wrote around the novel for a few weeks, daydreamed it, free-writing. Tried to talk myself out of it by writing around it. What actually dampened it was reading the book "Moneyball," by Michael Lewis.

You guessed it. The novel was about baseball. And reading "Moneyball" made the novel unbelievable. That, and the Giants had a homeless fan who has been missing since July, which was a part of my novel before I knew they had a homeless fan that they were looking for.

Let me reiterate--the novel has dampened. But it hasn't gone away. It just makes me think of how to write it better, or how to re-shape the idea.

I can't help it...I so love baseball. It seems stupid not to write about it. It seems stupid not to do it, better.

And, since I'm not such a hot writer, but scrappy instead, I have nothing to lose.

Thanks, Jim Tressel. Thanks, Bruce Bochy.

Write on.

New Blogger Interface

2011-09-04T00:28:00.000-07:00

Um, I think I'm liking this new interface.

Turns out that one of my blogs wasn't notifying me when I got comments, so I'm sure to be thought of as anti-social. Constantly learning here. Continue to have patience, if you can.

Something else I'm learning the hard way, nearly daily:

Only you know best what you need.

Write on.

Recovery

2011-08-21T18:33:00.001-07:00

This week promises to be hella busy...and I'm looking at another week in Carlsbad next week, so just a few notes of things I'm working on:

Two short stories, and trying to get the UC Berkeley ones from 2009 typed in
The novel that won't go away (Looks like I have to write the damn thing to get rid of it)
The writings for the 826 Valencia 8/26 day (looking forward to this assignment :))
Applying at all of the temp agencies in town

Had some writing breakthroughs over the weekend with journaling, which is an activity I don't get to do much beyond the three "morning pages" that I drag myself through in the mornings. Wrote up a punishment of expletives on Saturday morning that would probably make my mother blush but my grandmother on my dad's side proud. It gets easier--the walls just get thicker the closer you are to where you need to be.

Write on.

'Faced & Twitterpated

2011-08-15T12:30:00.000-07:00

It's official--I've given up social networking for the sake of "promotion."

To be honest, I've given up Facebook entirely on a surface level. One look at my Facebook page makes people think I'm still there in full force, with the occasional post about writing or baseball, but closer looks reveal the truth--I'm posting "via" a remote site on everything from GoodReads to the Rumpus to Blogger to MLB.com.

I wish I could say that I miss Facebook--involvement with such a site means that I'm normal and can play well with others, right? But I just can't bring myself to go there anymore. I like myself and my writing so much better without it. It's like walking away from the funhouse mirrors to outside and catching myself reflected in a garden pond. The introspective view is better, less self-focused strangely enough, and allows me to be more creative and speak with my own voice. (Emerson would roll his eyes at me, but let him--he didn't have this crowd to work with.)

As to Twitter--I used to have two outlets for Twitter: my laptop and a BlackBerry application called OpenBeak. OpenBeak wouldn't let me post pictures on Twitter, but it did this other lovely enabling action where it started the tweet stream right where I left off last time I logged in, and allowed me to scroll up to catch up. I call this an enabling action because it forced me to clear the que every two hours or I'd have all kinds of crap to scroll through (after waiting forever for it to load), so I could easily read EVERYTHING. That's part of what fed my frustration with social networking--having to be on top of every news item for writing, publishing, baseball, etc, when there is no way in hell you can do that unless it's a full time job that you're paid for. I wasn't getting paid. So I switched to Twitter for BlackBerry, which lets me post pictures, doesn't make me read EVERYTHING to catch up, and, if someone wants to get my attention, an @mention finally works to alert me on my phone desktop. (With OpenBeak, I had to go in and check for them.)

I'm trying to get away from @mentions to others myself--they don't get responses and that seems to feed back to the "no one's listening" aspect of my social networking frustration. A little over a week ago a friend of mine suggested that I was writing for all of the wrong reasons, and suggested that I might want to re-evaluate why I write. (This was after revealing to her that I wouldn't be blogging as much.) I didn't agree--I've loved writing for all of time, and didn't necessarily strive to publish it until friends in Missouri accused me of hiding my light under a bushel by not publishing it. Publishing my work on-line was like a bad boyfriend--maybe if I do this, this, and this over here I will get vindication for publishing--so I was networking and publishing for the wrong reasons, and therefore re-evaluated why I publish and social network. And it all comes back to what my mother used to tell me about the phone: "Sadie, the phone is there for your convenience, not theirs." I see Twitter and Facebook the same way, and use them accordingly.

Sadly enough for the friend who recommended that I re-evaluate my reason for writing, she's on Facebook. Well, when I'm ready to see who's won what Mafia war or whose kids have made honor roll, I'll tune back in...at my convenience. Meantime, I have tales to get down on paper.

Write on.

Step 1

2011-08-08T11:00:00.000-07:00

Renovating my writing practices so that I can grow means that I have to prune things, like some of the showiest bushes and trees, so that new growth can occur or so that I can see the street signs. These are the steps I've taken so far:

Set all blogs to be written once a week, including this one
Removed all bookmarks, history, and computer and mobile notification to Facebook

The second bullet point means that if someone sent anything to me on Facebook after midnight Pacific time Sunday night, I won't see it. Oh, now, Jo, you'll see it SOMETIME, right? Yes, semantics. I will see it sometime. You ask me for a timeline, though, you're out of luck. My brother follows a good practice--the last time he checked his Facebook was May of this year, and the last time he checked it before that was September...of 2009. I envy him, unnecessarily. I could do that. I'm just afraid of being forgotten.

But Facebook isn't the only way to connect, and if I'm forgotten by those who think it is, then maybe that's better. I'm not closing my account--it sits there wide open, a plasma-screened canvas for those who want to say hello. I received correspondence from someone in the list of friends once a week. Not a note from each of the 87, but one person a week. But with a list of only 87 while most others have a list of over 150, I imagine my priority ranking doesn't sit very high. A friend that I discussed this with over the weekend told me I have the wrong motivation for writing. I was offended--I wasn't writing for the wrong reasons, I was networking and marketing that writing for the wrong reasons. To her, they were one and the same...and on Saturday I thought maybe I shouldn't be a writer.

The biggest distinction in this whole mess is the difference between effect and recognition. I would have been happy to think I was having an effect, which, when you're a writer, looks like you are asking for recognition. I don't want applause--I just want to know I've touched the reader. And I'm not reaching very many people on Facebook or my blogs, so why not redistribute that writing to writing something that will reach someone?

Even if it's me?

Write on.

Social Writing

2011-08-04T06:13:00.000-07:00

Probably the most difficult thing that I've had to get used to with the writing groups is maintaining a balance of social interaction with the craft. I've been with this group for four years and in nearly every session there are participants who show up late, show up with strange requirements, or show up thinking that we are going to talk through the entire session. The group is a simple one--write together on a project of your making for an hour. Still, writers come in expecting the social element, or critique afterward--what Natalie Goldberg wrote as the writer's affirmation. You want someone to pat you on the back for doing this for an hour. You want others to praise you just for showing up. But that's not going to happen. You need to come here to write with others, period. That's why the name of the group is "Shut Up & Write."

We do talk a little before and little after, which I think lends to the process for the people who return again and again. But for those who demand attention in that golden hour--I have to learn patience, every night. Yet, that patience is golden when they produce it in me. I feel as though I have been given my own affirmation.

Following Footsteps

2011-08-02T07:10:00.001-07:00

I've been stepping in the footprints of my teacher in the last month. In Carlsbad I followed her Mill Valley retreat by reading in a cafe in the morning and then writing in a library for much of the day. I'm signed up for a fundraiser that allows me to write for others and donate to education, much like my teacher's "poem booths" of the past. And I facilitate writers' groups to inspire participants to write, in much of my teacher's style--just pick up the pen and write, without stopping or thinking, for an hour.

This is a safe place to work from for now...but at what point do I find my own path and stop stepping in her footprints?

It doesn't matter at the moment. This method is keeping my pen moving. When I need to take a different path, the path will present itself.

My teacher taught me that.

Write on.

Rotten Tomatoes, Via Apathy

2011-08-01T00:11:00.000-07:00

Here's an excellent story idea: fiction writer from the past is forced to grapple with modern writing networking tools.

Hemingway would be great with Twitter's format. But he would hate its audience. The Great Gatsby would have never been published by marketing on Facebook.

Here's dangerous mettle for you...silence. Perhaps you've experienced it. You call someone, and your call is never answered. You write something, and the publisher never even bothers to reject you (an ironic form of rejection). Or, we can go more subtle...you post things on vast, virtual walls, and they are greeted by...

SILENCE.

That's been happening to me for three days. It's on par with the unkind self-assumption that others have given up on you, or are rolling their eyes at you (dumb c***, who does she think she is, doesn't she know how to do that in this age and with this kind of communication, etc), laughing at you...

By the middle of the afternoon today I had been ignored long enough. I shut off the phone and the computer. I picked up a paper book and finished it. When I turned the phone back on there was a text message for me, from a guy who had ignored my texts the first two months after I left my last workplace, someone who I thought was a friend, after all that silence. His message was simple--to sneer at me for the Giants' performance in Cincinnati. He wasn't just teasing--his message was to rub my face in a dirty diaper.

[I don't own the Giants. I love them openly, which I guess, in the words of "The Franchise," puts "a target on my back" too. Everyone hates the Giants and hates Giants fans, so I'm either going to get ignored...or insulted. That's after three days of being ignored trying to play the networking game on Twitter and Facebook. That's after trying to mingle in the "virtual cafe." I sent him back a two-word reply.

I'll let you guess what it said.]

The last three days have reminded me, very pointedly, that I need to remember why I write. I have to write for me. I have to write regardless. And I have to write quality stuff for my sake, not write just to stay in the game in hopes of keeping people interested. I don't monitor my "views" and try to increase them or weed them out. I am balls-out, accelerator to the floor. Every time I try to do that network/stats stuff I just feel like slitting my wrists. Hell, I didn't even check the stats today...I knew that NO ONE WAS READING. So I have to go back to writing stuff I would want to read, and sail back to the water in between for a while.

There was hope, though...Becky Levine, a children's author on Twitter, posted the following message to the world:

"Think. Write. Repeat and rinse."

So simple and so helpful. So I re-Tweeted it.

And she thanked me for doing that. Not everyone thinks I'm invisible...after all, she knew what I needed in the smallest of gestures--a thanks for the shout-out.

You're welcome. Write on.

Hemingway

2011-07-28T12:53:00.000-07:00

Ernest Hemingway was injured in WW I, which gave him more than just a creative advantage--he had to stand up to write.

I could take a lesson from him. It's actually healthier for those with sedentary careers to get up several times during the course of the day and walk, or, if they prefer, work standing up for periods of the day. So I'm taking a tip from Hemingway at the moment and typing on my jewelry box. It's sturdy, it's a perfect height, and I need a reminder of good posture over the course of my day.

I don't need to lose weight. I need to feel better. Period.

*****

I belong to a group on Facebook called Writers on the Move, started by writer Christina Katz. So far most of my time in the group has been spent offering a thought here and there, reading the updates, but not doing much. I think by doing this I'm throwing away a gift horse.

I need to be more mindful when I read these posts in this group. This is about the only way that I can identify with Christina other than being a writer--I was recommended to her a few months back, but so much of her stuff is about motherhood it kind of got in the way of finding a kindred spirit. With the fitness AND the writing, however, I feel more of that kinship, and less of wanting to be a mother when I can't by one more networking center. It works, for now. I hope it keeps working, and while I don't skip the entries from the group about how the children are holding up the workout and the writing goals, I do give them the same amount of weight as my challenges. I'd like to think that's progress.

Write on...

How to Deal With Interruption

2011-07-27T11:03:00.000-07:00

Since yesterday my sinus issue has become a full-blown cold, complete with a streaming nose and fuzzy thinking.

Perfect for a writer hoping for a progress beyond interruption.

I'm giving myself somewhat of a break by lightening my load to carry in my handbag. For two to three nights a week (and one day on weekends when I attended the writing marathons) I would carry two bags or stuff my regular handbag with so much stuff that I would hurt myself. That will end starting today. I'm packing a pocket Moleskine, free-writing instead of expecting great strides (I'm shooting for the big strides at home), and for reading I'm accessing the Kindle app on my phone. When meeting other writers is hard work, then writing socially has to be re-thought and the expectations reset.

I met with my brother yesterday and he asked if I was booked the rest of the week. Cancel my writing groups? This is important to me, so I didn't press it. I know they are free meetings, but they give me access to other writers, instead of imprisoning me with other coworkers.

Passion friends vs. friends via imprisonment.

I'm going to keep working toward that, regardless of the physical struggles.

Honing

2011-07-25T15:20:00.000-07:00

I get tired of constantly starting over. It makes it hard to hone the sword.

Two weeks ago I spent a week in Carlsbad, which kept me away from most of my writing for that week, and then last week my dad was in the hospital, so even though I had time I felt I shouldn't be writing...

And Tuesday my brother is coming to the South Bay to stay through Friday. So I have to pre-write Tuesday's blogs and then drop them in the morning on Tuesday before I take off, taking me out of the loop on the blogs for the day AGAIN...

Hemingway used to say something about how no one will disturb you writing, but you have to set that up. My teacher Natalie Goldberg talked about making time for writing regardless, so that if an atom bomb goes off while you are writing, then, dammit, you'll go out writing.

THAT'S where I want to be. Going out writing when the atom bomb comes.

Oh, and I found out last Thursday how much I missed free-writing. Have to work that back into the schedule that I can't keep somehow.

It will improve. Without me having to be stubborn or cruel. If I can find a book lost in the environmental city, I can find writing again.

Write on.

Back to the Page...

2011-07-25T09:51:00.000-07:00

Four days without structured writing makes Jo a bit grumpy. So we're back to the pages today. I'm also incorporating a whole lot more exercise in the picture, since I'm tired of having no energy all day long. That could be due to other physiological factors, but I'll give the exercise thing a try anyway. It has to be better for me than sitting around.

And...tomorrow my brother's in the South Bay, so not much writing will go down tomorrow, sadly, unless I pack the laptop with me. Tempting...

Write on.

Barriers

2011-07-20T11:07:00.000-07:00

I'm overcoming two challenges today:

The writing group I'm leading tonight at 6:30 pm is held about three blocks from the Mission office of the SFPD. If yesterday's protests in that area repeat, I may have a story tomorrow of "you should see the other guy." Or maybe I won't have a story tomorrow. Depends on whether I get bailed out or shot. (Seriously, this is the part of San Francisco I loathe and despise.)
I have to write a sex scene.

Strangely, after spending three years working in Oakland, the thing I'm most scared of on that list is writing the sex scene.

Write on.

Back to the Paper...

2011-07-19T10:59:00.000-07:00

I've been working in some rather unorthodox circumstances for the last week, as though I am holding my breath or hurrying through my writing so that I could go do something else.

Today is all about the writing.

I get to stay home, pull the old typing desk out of the corner and place it where I can look out the window, and work my way through all kinds of projects, that before San Diego, I was keeping perfect pace with. I have quite the list.

And my heart is finally calm, with no rush or flutter.

Write on.

Back to Basics

2011-07-18T07:28:00.000-07:00

The last two days of contemplation on my writing have been full-circle lessons in why I write. The more that I attend these writing groups, the more that I drift into a sense of making the experience better, and, at the end of the day, sometimes you have to chop off an arm to save yourself from an injured hand.

So this week I'm proud to say that I only have two writing group meetings with my current writing group, and I have no expectations with the new one that I'm trying. We won't be writing at the new one, either. How weird for me after all this time.

As to the current writing group, I'm going to have to keep a copy of Natalie Goldberg with me, and let a lot of stuff go. The leadership staff is going to make my life miserable with that group from now on, and I have to find some way to get over that and just write--I will keep myself available to new writers and offer support, but as to the popularity contest...it's back to being like a group of managers. Trick is now to disregard that and move on with bigger things.

Like me, writing.

Write on.

Multiples, Briefly

2011-07-14T07:27:00.000-07:00

Another short post this morning...as soon as I can sneak breakfast in after my roommate leaves, I have miles to go and promises to keep. Today is a TWO writing group day--I am trying out a new one in the Mission, and I'm hosting my first solo event in the Richmond tonight. This means I get to eat out in some pretty disparate locales today and that I'm going to be out among the people for a majority of my day, instead of hiding in the apartment until I make an appearance. I've attacked my morning pages, my career change blog, and now this...after this venture I'm checking e-mail and fueling up and hitting the road.

I'm pretty much in love.

Yesterday was a damn hard day. I had slept about three and a half, maybe four hours the night before because I was so incredibly revved up by the opportunity to lead two (three if you count my subbing gig on Wednesdays) writing groups that I couldn't stay prone. I was exhausted by the time I got to writing group last night, and, to add insult to injury, the backroom that we normally utilize for the meeting was crammed full of people and I couldn't find a book that should have been easily found in green San Francisco. I didn't want to do group last night. Where we gonna put 'em? I had forgotten the cardinal rule of cafes in San Francisco: despite the presence of internet, people do turn over. By some strange and yet predictable miracle, the place cleared out and everyone showed up (save, of course, for the guy who has me host instead of him). And I felt like I could fly.

It NEVER fails. I could walk in with a flesh wound and the process of attending group would make the whole world Willy Wonka-ed again.

Write on.

Wired

2011-07-13T10:00:00.000-07:00

I slept about four hours last night. All because of my writing group and how excited I am about the opportunity.

So this will be brief, since you get to click on a link and read all about it there. Today is also Lost Crates day for me, sort of like Boxing Day after Christmas, and then I have group tonight.

Life as a writer, for the moment, ain't all bad.

Write on.

Morning Pages

2011-07-12T10:37:00.000-07:00

Each morning, when I first wake up and before I stuff my face for breakfast, I write three pages longhand, morning pages. The inspiration for it came from a book that a friend gave me last November by Julia Cameron concerning a writer's "diet," but I've read "The Artist's Way" when I first started reading Natalie Goldberg and other writing gurus, so I was already familiar with the concept. (The best explanation that I've found of morning pages can be found here.)

Sometimes, for stretches of days, I feel that the pages are useless. This past week, on vacation, I sort of resented them--they got me up early so that I could have the chance to finish them before family woke up and required my attention. And this morning, my first day back from vacation, I spent longer than usual with them because I wanted to get down to the "real" writing, like my blogs and short stories. Each sentence was torture. I thought, "Do I really need this?"

The thing is, if I don't do these pages, it's an emotional difference, like missing life-sustaining prescription medication in the morning. The first Saturday I was on vacation my brother was up before I could get to pages, so I put them off until the next day. Yesterday I didn't get to them until three o'clock in the afternoon. Both times I got angry--I felt like I had been denied something that was either strongly a part of me or necessary to my psychological well-being.

What is happening with the morning pages when I drag with them is I am self-censoring. I just have to spill them, no matter how crappy they sound or read. And I keep forgetting that. I write so much for the world to read now that I forget to save a little for me.

So we'll try again. Just one more day. :)

Write on.

From the Department of "Well, That Was Dumb"

2011-07-08T11:31:00.000-07:00

I'm having one of those mornings where I got off to a weird start. I bought yet another laptop bag yesterday, and in the transfer of writing supplies to take with me to the library I forgot my pouch of back-up pens. I've Tweeted the fact, Facebooked the fact...I'm obsessed. This was supposed to be a writing session.

And it was. Just an on-line one, is all. I'm still working on adaptability issues, obviously. City writer, country writer. :) (Thanks, Robin.)

And for those of you following my bag count...I picked up this little gem at the outlet mall, Kenneth Cole, $17, AND it matches my current handbag. Oh, I'm such a girl.

I'm at the Carlsbad City Library this morning, the Georgina Cole branch, while Serena volunteers at the Senior Center. Yes, I could have volunteered with her. Yes, I was selfish about my writing and chose that instead this week. I'm used to the San Francisco Public Library, which isn't much different from this library at the satellite branches. The two biggest differences are:

The librarians here are so friendly they greet you coming in, and they invite you to stay and read a while. "It's hot out there; you better stay put," was my instruction on Wednesday. I readily complied and read for two hours that day. (Had plenty of ink and I read the whole time--oh, for God's sake, let it GO already, Jo...) The San Francisco librarians are pleasant, but you have to get in front of them and make yourself known. I suspect that has to do with the second difference, below...
About 30% of the patrons at the SF Public Library are homeless people, camping in the temperature control with free knowledge. I don't begrudge them that, although it lends an unmistakable aroma to a library in San Francisco that for the most part does an excellent job of keeping me from curling up with a book there. In this library there is just one homeless person, and none that I could find at the main branch over on Dove Lane. The homeless woman here seems disturbed but well-behaved--I imagine she doesn't want to be thrown out in this heat.

I love the Main Branch of the SF Public Library for it's grandeur, but I must say that I love these little libraries for their humanity. Today I had to journey upstairs for a vacant writing table, but Wednesday I got a table right by checkout, and got to talk to children. One little girl who I swear came up to my knee insisted on showing me the correct way to self-checkout (Tina Fey, Jr.), and another little girl passed my table and demanded that she wish me goodbye and that I have a good day. This friendliness seems consistent with much of Carlsbad--Mike and Serena's neighbors invite me over to their units and show me pets and renovations with relish, offer up sunburn cure-alls, and ask if I'm looking for a vacancy down here. They even nod in agreement about my love of San Francisco--"Oh, I understand, hon. Just saying you have a home here if you want it." At the cafe yesterday two people stopped to ask me about the library book I was reading, and if I was reading it for work. STRANGERS. It's like Mayberry meets Surf City.

Well that's enough writing for now...I'm going to finish that book I started on Wednesday and wait to see what the tide will bring.

Write on. :)

Hide and Go Seek

2011-07-07T13:33:00.000-07:00

I'm in San Diego this week (well, Carlsbad...I get liberal and start incorporating myself in that San Diego curtain pretty freely), and not writing much. The only writing I get done is my morning pages. I got in four pages of free-writing yesterday, but that's it.

But I'm okay with all of it.

What I am doing down here is a lot of living, or watching the living. I've got the pace almost down, but I don't need to--I just watch and talk to people and listen. Listening is the big thing. I had one hang-up yesterday; our neighbor is high drama and took her high drama on her cell phone down to the hot tub in the courtyard to share with the whole complex. She's the only one I've had to drown out with the iPod. Everyone else I listen to.

Either I'm at peace, or people have better articulation skills down here in Carlsbad. In SF most Muni conversations are peppered with the word "like." I know the scientific study behind that word's abuse but having that knowledge doesn't make the abuse of the word any easier to bear. When I get back the new goal is to leave the iPod off first and see if I can find pockets where, like, you know, like, they don't, like, talk like that.

Next to me at this cafe there are two women talking intelligently about education plans at the local school for the coming fall. At the table on the other side of me is a mundane conversation about what one of the party should have ordered, but, despite the subject matter, it's easy to listen to. Other things pop up to fuel my writing idea pot. On Tuesday night a woman in the complex across the lagoon tried to jump, and was carted off by the paramedics. My sis-in-love called it "Rear Window, Revisited," and asked me what I had to write about since I didn't know the circumstances or the aftermath. I grinned. "See, those are the parts I get to make up," I said with relish. Earlier in the vacation my brother gave me an idea for a modern twist on "The Old Man and the Sea, Revisited." So I could write. But I'll do that when I get back to lonely.

There are inspirational places to write as well. A suggestion made to me didn't pan out because that location has been closed for about a year, but the suggestion got me exploring downtown. I wrote a little in a french bakery, the local libraries (two of them), and the cafe here. I get words down. To paraphrase Picasso, they don't look like me now, but they will. And I'm losing my fear of deserts. Or, I should say, the fear isn't so acute.

This may be my last post until I hit the Bay Area again on Monday. Meantime, write on.

Vacation

2011-07-01T10:44:00.000-07:00

My brother is kidnapping me until July 11th, so if I'm in here at all to comment on my writing it will be a miracle. Wi-fi in the Carlsbad apartment is sketchy at best, and I may be getting entertained every day for over a week.

This strikes me as fun and a little scary. What if I forget how to write?

What if I fall out of love with writing?

I've packed lots of paper...and am hoping for time with it.

Write on...

Flying High

2011-06-29T21:47:00.000-07:00

I am a little over midway through my Shut Up & Write Meetup marathon for the week (two more to go), and I am soaring. I'm seeing lots of return faces and getting a good grip on my writing--a good enough grip that tonight I spent my session writing poetry of all things.

I just had fun with words tonight. I'm on track with all of my goals and I'm ready to take the paints and brushes and canvas and fuck around a while. Not to mention what this exercise does in stirring up new projects for me.

I'm writing this on Wednesday night to dump in the hopper on Thursday morning; the Meetup on Thursday is on the other side of the planet at 2 pm, so I pretty much have to head to that neighborhood shortly after I get up and get ready tomorrow. After the Meetup, if my body is up to it, I'm going to head to the SFMoMA for an evening of art and writing a little more in the rooftop garden, or at Westfield. We'll see.

I shall return on Tuesday. Write on.

Unknown

2011-06-29T10:41:00.000-07:00

I received a cute little comment on yesterday's post suggesting my titles for posts in this blog suck. So I went for even greater obscurity today.

This blog is mostly for my notes, and mostly for my notes as a writer. I don't try to market this one--I have two others that I market, and this one just sits here to give me a chance to talk about writing without censoring myself. So when I get the feedback that I need to improve my titles on this blog I have to snicker. Someone hasn't been reading the blog, and someone therefore doesn't know much about marketing this blog.

*****

I'm falling into a pattern with my writing groups--I'm using the time during the sessions to freewrite on my writing projects and tune the goals. For the last week I haven't done any actual project work in the sessions, and it feels right. It actually provides me with two luxuries: meeting other writers, and spending time thinking about my writing so that I have a sharper focus for the next time I sit down with the project.

It's like I'm teaching myself my own college class...or actually seeing through a work of art.

Write on.

Rain, And Distractions

2011-06-28T11:22:00.000-07:00

So I woke up this morning to rain, which made me grumpy. Ok, I was kind of grumpy already--lots of dishes in the kitchen today that I didn't need to do, but I do them every day so I did them today. Grumpiness out of the way, and then it rains. Grumpiness renewed. I was going to go to the grocery store today. No dice. Eating the last of my food.

Ok, mood reset.

The only thing I have to do today is write. When the holiday is over I probably have to go back to work--which means I'm going to have to do some crappy job that has nothing to do with writing, or nothing to do with managing or teaching...holy criminy, Jo, just STOP. I keep forgetting to take one day at a time. Yes, it's raining today. Yes, there were a boatload of dishes. But one frickin' day at a time.

I'll learn it. Just watch me.

Meantime, Giants have scored one against the Cubs and I'm getting my writing done. And I don't have to go to the grocery store.

Write on.

Follow Through

2011-06-27T11:08:00.000-07:00

My most difficult challenge these days is trying to not to push other writers into discipline.

This is a particular challenge with the Meetup "Shut Up & Write!" meetings. I'm to the point where I am attending nearly every meeting, and in each one, whether I try to hide it or try to advertise it, it comes out that I'm a veteran of these meetings. Someone (or more than one person) ends up talking to me and asking me about my writing habits, about how to meet people in San Francisco, or confessing to me how they just can't get anything written.

I can relate. I have been there. I sometimes go there.

But at the end of the day, if you don't love to write as much (or more) as life itself, then bear in mind that it won't be good. It may take off. You may become famous. I'm reading a novel right now by someone who wanted to be famous. That's how the book reads, anyway. It's action-packed. It's all exotic.

It's a string of vomiting and sex linked by a train ride. I'm debating whether to stop reading it, because I'm hoping the second half of the novel will redeem the first half. I'm running a risk, though. It could just be more of the same.

That writer got lucky. I could love writing and write every day for all of time and not get published. The thing is, in the end, if that stops me.

It doesn't. So when they ask me for advice, I just say what my mother said, "Be patient." That's my stock answer. At the end of the day they either take it and write for the whole hour or the whole day (in the case of marathons), or they have better things to do or less want to write, and I see that come out, too.

My task is to let it go and not lecture them. Not everyone is cut out to be a writer. Even some of those who are published.

Write on.

Blank Day

2011-06-24T10:44:00.001-07:00

As promised, I didn't get to write much yesterday--in fact, the only thing I finished was my morning pages. And that was completed on Caltrain.

Today may be better, but I'm not holding my breath. I have a lot of housekeeping to do today, and I don't want to execute self-defeating behavior. And there has to be time left over for physical activity occasionally. When I listened to Jane Smiley on Tuesday she talked about how she felt that authors need to fuel themselves with physical activity within writing activity. She rides horses, and her explanation was an answer to "How do you have time?" We tend to make time for what is important to us. The equal balance of intellectual and physical are important to Smiley, as it is to me.

That said, I have some writing to do before the next load of laundry comes out.

Write on.

Pablo (Not Sandoval)

2011-06-22T20:57:00.000-07:00

Another evening out tonight...got in an excellent writing day, and then went and saw the Espana at Twilight exhibit at the de Young to avoid the crowds at Picasso. I love the narrative line in the exhibits at deYoung and the SF MoMA, and they always teach me something about the artist. Yes, duh, I know that's the point, but I'm getting the hang of this new constant cultural thing, so have patience.

Tomorrow brother is in town so I'm trying to cram in all of my writing to drop in the morning--so this is going to look a little strange in the morning when I drop stuff into the internet like Santa Claus.

Maybe a pauper Santa Claus. :)

There will be writing, though--am packing my notebook for freewriting and the comp notebooks for the rough draft of the short story.

Write on.

Jane

2011-06-22T11:06:00.000-07:00

Another close encounter with literature last night...got to listen to and meet Jane Smiley. Of her and Mary Roach, I would rather talk with Mary...Jane was a bit too college PhD for me. It was a treat to hear her though. I was most struck by her comment that she loves what she is working on now best, because it keeps her optimistic.

I was amazed that there was nearly no one there. This woman won a Pulitzer, and I didn't have anyone sitting on either side of me. Was Smiley amazed by this? She didn't reveal it if she was. I don't know why I keep thinking of writers as rock stars, when no one else my age seems to. Sad fact: at all of these events, I'm the youngest person in the room, by sometimes up to twenty years younger. What will happen to the culture in the years to come? I feel old and yet like a kid when I go to these things. I'm caught between two ages--go to an event that costs hundreds of dollars like an Adele concert or Stephen Colbert's political march in Washington DC, or go to see the authors who write the words I relate to? I wish I could be cool, but I can't.

In a minor shift, however, there is a cartoonist with the Bay Citizen who always seems to end up at these events with me, although I never meet him. He looks to be my age in his pictures, or maybe even younger. Suddenly, despite being surrounded by retirees, I feel youth in my choices, and it keeps me going back.

Write on.

Gertie

2011-06-21T10:29:00.000-07:00

I had a very full day yesterday--beating the dead horse that is San Francisco's fascination of Gertrude Stein downtown. I knew very little about her before I left yesterday morning, and, by the end of the day, I had drank the Kool-Aid and enjoyed the taste.

I never enjoyed Stein's writing, and still don't, honestly. She plays with words to the point where they are supposed to be profound, and I just find them, um, spent. But her life was fascinating. She was a tomboy, and full of herself, and yet kind, and...well, I cannot write well about the experience yet, so I'll lay off for now. A blog on it, somewhere (or maybe more than one), is sure to come.

I've also been fighting with how much to share on-line via networking...I have no problem with Twitter, but Facebook seems like a waste of time. Still mulling it over though...more on that to come.

Write on.

Short, Sweet

2011-06-18T17:46:00.000-07:00

Not even gonna tag this.

REALLY good writing day. And REALLY good meeting-other-writers-from-over day.

Just sayin'.

Write on.

Turned To Stone, Or, Closed Minds

2011-06-17T14:31:00.000-07:00

I'm sitting here listening to Ingrid Michaelson's music, which isn't diva force but is spider-web strong. It's been another good day, but not the most productive of writing days. I'm not quite sure what a productive writing day would be for me--finishing a novel in a single day? Writing the entire New York Times Book Review section? I have a tendency of grading my accomplishments harshly. Particularly since most of the writing today was behind the scenes: an article on a library event tonight and a blog post on the blog that is designed to back up my resume with English instead of that resume-ese that I hate writing in. I'm not sure if any employers read it, but after reading a post today from my friend Robin I don't really have an excuse not to look it up.

Speaking of reading, or giving writers a chance...

A few weeks back I took up the challenge from a columnist who backed Naipaul despite his diminishments of women writers and decided to give him another chance as a reader. In her article (which I cannot find now, Lord love me) she stated that we shouldn't discount good writers just because of their beliefs. I'm in full agreement. Hemingway and Amis were/are as much of masochists as Naipaul, and yet I would gladly read them. Naipaul, as another commenter on another blog put it, is just "tedious." Tedious is kind. I found the best way to get to sleep was to read Naipaul, and that was with my reading glasses on. I had tried "A Bend In the River" when Naipaul first won the Nobel, and the cure for insomnia happened then, and this time it was "A House For Mr. Biswas," another yawner. I just couldn't justify any more than 87 pages of such behavior.

I'm sure there are vast and great societies of people out there who find Naipaul worth putting up with despite his views. Maybe someday I'll reach their intellect. But for now I find myself relishing the Pulitzer Prize of Jennifer Egan (um, woman writer who loves language and format), Jane Austen (a comedy-of-manners writer like Naipaul who knows how to love language, and, um, a woman), and "Major Pettigrew's Last Stand" by Helen Simonson (another comedy of manners by a woman who can make south Asian and Middle Eastern characters look more intricate and regal than the British).

Life is too short, I say, for V.S. Naipaul.

Going to take a walk, grab a cup of coffee, and get in some fiction rough drafting before my library event tonight.

Write on.

Hardly Workin'...

2011-06-16T16:43:00.000-07:00

I've been working on a blog today and that is just about it...and not even this one. I sort of spill a mess here so my back-channel people can be in the know, but I got a bit behind a couple of times this week. No matter. The sun still came out and I finished that blog entry and I threw away all of my expired health care products today, so something got done, regardless.

Tomorrow looks like an ambitious writing day--I have a lot to do before I just cut loose with a short story in Saturday's writing group.

This is the song that's been playing all afternoon on the iPod to push the words through and out of me. It's from Treme, of course, since I'm obsessed, and I know Steve Earle isn't always the most desirable, but I love this song. "Like a second line steppin' high, raising hell as we go along." Nice.

Write on...

Still Learnin'

2011-06-15T13:38:00.000-07:00

Went to the deYoung this morning to see Picasso and was snubbed due to lack of planning (that'll learn ya, Jo), so I came back home and changed clothes (into something cooler), hydrated, had lunch (lots of fruits and veggies and I'm hiking all over creation already--where's the weight loss? Where's the love?), and then decided to catch up on some social networking. The Shut Up and Write facilitator for Wednesday nights finally posted the meeting, and then promptly e-mailed me to ask if I'd host it. Ah, flakiness. But that character trait is his to own, as I said to myself, but I'm just there to show up, shut up, and write.

Natalie Goldberg comes to mind yet again: "Make a positive effort for the good."

I had to remember that last night too, when I thought I was the only one attending the Tuesday Shut Up and Write and someone else showed up at about 15 minutes prior to start. Just make a positive effort for the good. I have to look at this like Zen--if no one shows up, stay, write.

Sooner or later I will be so grounded in this that it won't be a saga. In the meantime, I'm just stunned that no one else is as passionate about this as I am.

Write on.

An-tici-pa-tion...

2011-06-13T10:10:00.000-07:00

It's a gloomy morning here in the Inner Sunset district of San Francisco, although God knows the sun is trying to burn through the fog. I am moving around the apartment, doing "knucklehead" stuff, as they would call certain tasks on "West Wing" that fell below the radar of POTUS. I got cleaned up, had my healthy breakfast, did one load of dishes (there were two loads in the sink, so I have more knucklehead stuff for this afternoon), paid bills, filed papers, and in a few minutes will get to the job search. I am doing knucklehead stuff for a couple of reasons: I do this garbage every Monday; and I am waiting for UPS to deliver a package. Last month I signed up for something called Lost Crates, where, once a month, the recipient gets a sampling of the latest and greatest in art and/or writing supplies, without knowing what they'll be. It's probably the last thing I can afford, but I was intrigued, just to see what it would be, to have the anticipation of looking forward to something akin to a care package, as though I was still young enough and still learning enough to get those.

It's been a couple of months like that, though...looking forward to Giants games, to the Treme tour concert, to the Woody Allen movie, all at discounts, and all unexpected. This package will be the last big event for a while, and then I'll have to create events of my own--maybe a new job in the traditional sense, maybe a story sold.

*****

For a long time I thought of Meetups as something formal, only operated by the truly sane and secure in themselves. The founder and original organizer of the Meetup series that I attend, "Shut Up and Write!" set the bar high. He's the perfect vision of manager/facilitator/mentor/motivator; when one of the group's members says, "Hey, why don't we have one in Berkeley?" his response is, "Yes, why don't YOU look into that?" This empowerment has created a spreading of the group throughout the Bay Area and continued it to New York City (with two groups there) and a new possibility now in Toronto. It's a great way to spread the word and the concept of the group geographically.

It's creating a bit of skirmish back here in the home turf, though.

Different organizers take different accountability for their groups, to be sure. The founder wants to make sure that every Shut Up and Write session is consistent, so that if you like Shut Up and Write you'll tell your friends, and either they'll come with you or go to a Shut Up and Write in their neighborhood. Keep in mind that the group has reached that level--this past week there were meetings in Berkeley, SoMA, the Mission, the Inner Richmond, and the Castro/Duboce Park area. I love that layout--I can finally go to Meetups close to me (for me, a Meetup that's close is one bus-line away from me), and I'm sure others find the locations that aren't close to me close to their homes or workplaces. It's a great idea. And so what if meetings fall on the same day as other meetings? It's still a great way to choose.

It's a great selection for everyone but one of the organizers, that is. Last week two of the organizers scheduled for the same time slot--one a long-established meeting in the Mission, one a first-time meeting in the Inner Richmond. Delightfully, the Inner Richmond is not only closer but in a library, so that I have a shorter commute AND I don't have to buy coffee and snacks to write. Surprisingly, the first-time meeting had more people sign up and actually show up than the long-established meeting, and I know from talking to that facilitator before that he was probably livid. He is a facilitator that does contract work, and he's in the middle of a project right now and doesn't come to his own meeting very often, but he hates it when other groups try to copy-cat or try to borrow the Shut Up and Write concept. I've always bit my tongue to keep from reminding him that we borrowed the concept from Natalie Goldberg.

I see this week, on Monday, that neither Wednesday group has scheduled. I can almost bet what has happened. Either neither one of the facilitators are scheduling, waiting to see if the other one will, or, they are both duking it out with the founder to see if this is ethical. Either way it seems a bit erratic--there's no Wednesday night meeting yet, and, if you want to grow your group, shouldn't you get a calendar up as soon as possible so that potential group members would want to make plans? Don't you at least want to LOOK stable?

All I could think of was Natalie Goldberg's final pages of "Long Quiet Highway," where she sat for peace in downtown Santa Fe every weekday from noon to twelve-thirty. She had been practicing Zen for years, and this wasn't a protest, it wasn't "partisan," it was just her way of dealing with the first Gulf War. I look at it this way--if I could write regardless, like Nat, then I'm grounded, I'm stable, and maybe others will join me. I'm thinking that they will be more likely to join me if I show up myself, but if not, well, that's their practice. Maybe it's time to establish a practice of my own, a Shut Up and Write of my own, to show up to regardless.

And it would be something to look forward to, without any doubt at all.

Friday

2011-06-10T15:54:00.000-07:00

I did in fact get my short story work in today and my morning pages, but all of my other writing seems to have gone out the window. Everything else that I needed to do took twice as long to do, in some sort of Vulcan Mind Warp:

Woke up at 3 a.m. and couldn't sleep. Finished the Anthony Bourdain memoir, reviewed it, and loaded the Naipaul book on GoodReads.
Slept from 4:30-7, then fell back to sleep.
Woke up at 9. Criminently. Wrote morning pages, had breakfast, did dishes, walked up the hill for exercise and energy, bought stuff for lunch.
11:15, put laundry in. Worked on short story. Switched to dryer at 11:50. Worked on short story.
Made a lunch that will be leftovers through Monday.
Read two articles in The New Yorker.
Walked, got coffee. And here I am at 4.

And I have evening concert plans. So the day is pretty much shot.

But, dammit, I got to that short story now, didn't I?

Shut Up and Write, Dammit

2011-06-09T12:59:00.000-07:00

This week I've been working on a project, a.k.a., short story. I haven't written a short story since the extension course in spring of 2009 that I took with UC Berkeley extension, and about 60 days after finishing that class I broke my writing hand. I'm just now writing short stories again. You could say my bounce-back abilities suck.

But here's the wonderful transition--based on my past experiences in writing, and my past superstitions, you would have thought that I would have given up writing altogether by now. My father would say that the gods were trying to tell me something. My mother, however, would point to Job and ask, what would God (or the devil) have to do to you in order to shut down your writing? Would you write no matter what?

God damn it, yes, I would.

Would you lose your job, your livelihood, for your writing?

Yep.

Would you lose your family for your writing?

Yep.

Would you lose your home?

I have. Whenever I put the pen down, I've lost my home. If I'm writing, I'm home.

Would you lose your sense of self?

I don't have a sense of self to start with. "Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose."

I get my sense of self from writing. You'd have to take away the writing to diminish my sense of self.

Would you give up your health?

Again, seems like if you take away my writing you take away my health. Can't happen.

There is a part of the story of Job, from what I remember, where Job pushes back at God. I'm not going to look it up and quote it exactly, but Job says something the extent of "God, I give up. Why do you pick on me? Why do you take away everything? Why take away my happiness?" And God says something back about how Job can't possibly know WHY things happen--his tiny little brain can't handle that part. Job's job (heh) is to handle it and ask God for strength.

My job is not to ask, "Hey, what's with the timing? I just wrote a short story about a man not unlike my father who becomes a widower and adopts a dog to take the dead wife's place, and you hit me with this crap about my mother dying of cancer. I finally feel like I write a story again, and you crack my hand two months later."

And God answers, in my mind, "You don't get to know the big picture. You don't get to know why. YOU JUST HAVE TO KEEP WRITING. IS...THAT...WHAT...YOU...WANT?"

Yep.

God damn it, yes, I said, yes, I do, yes.

So I've taken this week off and learned how to write a short story with the same lack of fear and the same day-to-day determination that I would a blog. I want to write short stor-IES. Plural. Not one every 7 years, or one every 2 years. I want to crank them out on at least a monthly basis, for at least an hour a day, like I do my blogs and my free-writing. I want a short story to come easily to me, and not pick up the concept like a loaded gun and holding it out at arm's length between two fingers, afraid I'm going to hurt myself or kill a relative because it's loaded. It's LOADED. Take it out in the field and fire it. Point it at tin cans at first if you must, stand four feet from the target or closer until you can hit it, but PULL THE TRIGGER. LOAD IT AGAIN AND PULL THE TRIGGER. And if I do that every day for an hour, then the loaded gun becomes the art of marksmanship instead of the dreaded thing we keep in the house because it looks wicked or because we live in an area of necessary self-defense. Keep backing up from the tin can. Get better. Move on to moving clay pigeons. Move on to birds. Move on to harvest.

I didn't mean to go all Sarah Palin, but that was the best analogy I had.

Technically, I'm back. But I'm back in a capacity that is nowhere NEAR what it was before. The capacity of before was keeping up with trends. That will still be the goal, but on MY terms. Facebook was down to an assigned day when I left--now it will just be used for a posting of stuff that I do on other sites, like when I finish reading a book, when I write a blog, when I watch a movie, and when I sign up for a Meetup. I can do all of that stuff and never go to Facebook. And I think from now on that would be best. I was spending too much time on Twitter and Google Reader, too, so they will be limited to time like writing gets allocated, not just every time I'm bored. I'm still working out the kinks there.

But I'm writing. Things, not just journal entries.

Thank God, I'm free at last.

Onward, dear reader.

Better Now

2011-06-04T22:19:00.000-07:00

Stayed away from Facebook and the news today and did much better, mood-wise. Cleared up two reading assignments, completed morning pages, and did some freewriting. And took a walk in my Backyard. That was refreshing, and I was hungry for ideas and food for the first time in two days.

Tomorrow? God knows. But I feel much better knowing that there's no calendar for tomorrow. Perhaps that's trying to tell me something.

Onward, dear reader.

Anti-Climax

2011-06-03T14:10:00.000-07:00

It's been a very blah day, and the internet is just depressing me. Today was my designated Facebook day, and that depressed me more. I think what might be best is stop with the news items and the internet for the weekend--hang everything up and give myself a little space to appreciate myself. Right now I feel like an old, fat wallflower. And I shouldn't. Not with the week that I've had.

It might have something to do with the weather, the silence, or, being on this side of this week. Any way that you slice it, I'm just ready to eat the solitude for a while and remember why I liked me so much. Without getting an ego about it.

Clutter Patrol

2011-06-02T14:17:00.000-07:00

Heh, heh...just organized all of my favorites on Safari, so now I get to do mind melt every time I try to find stuff for a little while...

Have had a really good couple of days of writing, and so was absent from here yesterday. I'd like to think of this as a running on-line journal, so when I miss a day I start to get that feeling like I mis-buttoned my shirt or something. But most of the day happenings for yesterday and today went into a blog post on Sea Level that I'll point out on Facebook tomorrow. I am trying to get in the habit of only going into Facebook on Fridays, with marginal success. It's a work in progress and a goal I'm not going to hit overnight, but I'll still try for it. The plan is to only hit up Facebook on Friday, and on Friday on Twitter point my Twitter followers to Facebook for news. Changes things up and maybe some of the readers will follow back and forth. We'll see.

Twitter = Reader's Digest Condensed Book.

Facebook = Reader's Digest Condensed Book with the paper illustrated book jacket still on

Debating an event tomorrow night...the Bookswap thing at Booksmith. The weather is supposed to be crappy, I want to give readers a chance to go, I've never been to Booksmith (and yet I write about 'em--just call me Stephen Crane, war hero, and get it overwith), and I don't have a book to swap because I give all of them away as I read them, damn it. On the other hand I just added "Writing Down the Bones" to my Kindle and have a pocket copy that I could trade. That book has probably been the greatest writing teacher I have ever had. I was going to give the pocket copy to a friend of mine, but only because her therapist has her journal-writing, and not because she is normally a writer. Probably not the best reason if I don't want this copy to get dusty. We'll see. I'll head over there now, see if there are tickets, and check out the store. (Removes a couple of the cons on the list, I guess.)

You ever hit one of those strides where you don't care if anyone's reading--you're just glad to be writing?

Hells, yeah. I'm there.

HOME RUN

2011-05-31T22:54:00.000-07:00

Here's a note to say that if you're debating something, take a chance.

I was published twice today on one article. Once by me, and once by a bookstore who loved my post announcing a slightly quirky event that will occur on Friday.

Behold.

And people LIKE the article. Like, Sally-Field-like the article. Holy reaching the reader, Batman.

Strangers like my article. And Booksmith shouted out the article to my employers on Facebook, so now I've kudos. TWICE.

Cue "Song 2" by Blur. The Giants' biggest fan just hit a personal home run. Ever try not to scream from your bedroom at 10:30 at night? (Uh, don't answer that.)

Ok, time to shut up now, Jo. Celebrate in the morning.

Write on.

Slow, Er, Stopped Learner

2011-05-30T21:07:00.000-07:00

Hardest lesson to learn today was this:

No one can make you feel inferior without your consent. -Eleanor Roosevelt

My father did it and an iPhone did it today. Argh.

In the meantime, I climbed Moraga Hill and beat the crap out of my inner demons. Need to do that more often.

Write on.

Lead Dog

2011-05-29T23:16:00.000-07:00

Every week since I've left Grainger, with the exception of two, I've been asked to substitute-facilitate a Meetup for my writing group.

My original intention of meeting with a group of like-minded folks who are committed to their writing has changed to, at least once a week, a lesson in patience with people who don't respect other group members or a facilitator enough to show up on time. If I'm not facilitating I can deal with that pretty well because I don't have to greet people until after the hour is called, but if I'm facilitating I have to get settled and start over when some of them show up half way into the session.

This is usually for a Meetup that takes me two bus lines to get to.

I know what I need to do...I just don't want to do it. :/

Write on, dear writer.

A Lake House

2011-05-28T20:44:00.000-07:00

I'm not quite sure who exactly still reads this blog, which probably makes it the safest thing on the planet to write in. I sit here looking at my dashboard with Blogger, and I realize that since I haven't been here since January it's probably a great place to play with writing, experiment, write with the truest voice I can without trying to impress, and then take that practice and write "better" with the blogs that may be more promoted.

Since I have been writing in other blogs for some time now, I don't feel guilty for neglecting this one. This one is like what relatives of mine used to own in lake houses--those summer places that you button up in the fall with boards and dropcloths and other protective measures and that you open up, usually just before or on the first big three-day holiday weekend of the spring, like Memorial Day. I wander into this one now, take the boards off the windows, shake out and fold up the dropcloths, and head, as E.B. White would write, "once more to the lake."

It's been a strange day, which it normally is when I am hormonal. I tend to have strange sleeping schedules, I tend to eat the strangest things, I'm wired for sound but too exhausted to execute, and I tend to panic easily. All I had planned for today were two things: read 100 pages of David Mitchell's "The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet," and visit Hayes Valley to taste ice cream. I never got to Hayes Valley, and I kept falling asleep during the novel. The sun wouldn't stay out, the Giants were offering up Jonathan Sanchez, and my downstairs neighbors were noisy. There were a million excuses not to do what I planned. At 3:30 I finally gave up, broke out all of the tools I should have for the reading, forgave myself for not getting down to Hayes Valley, and made my reading goal with the help of coffee and reading glasses. I turned on the fan in the living room for white noise. There's still time for Hayes Valley, another day.

When I finished the reading goal, I wandered the apartment, restless. What to do now? Pick up the pen and try to write something? The journal didn't yield much--about five ruled lines. I wandered, paced, again. I reached for a well-read, well-worn copy of a book that was written by a teacher of mine, even though we have only met once: "Long Quiet Highway" by Natalie Goldberg. Everything spinning in me settled in a series of ever-slowing circles until I was still. I could think. I had to find it in another voice, but find it I did. The sunset filled the lake house windows and I put on a jacket and went to find food to prepare for dinner. Pasta, sauce, and wine later, I am still calm, the lake house ready for me to spend a summer here, and write anything I damn well want to, without fear of repercussion or judgment.

And now, for a swim. Write on, dear writer.

A Wonderful Life

2011-01-22T06:21:00.000-08:00

Last night I wrote a post on the impact of three teachers on me...and when I woke up this morning the first thing through my head was the line, "You see, George, you've had a wonderful life," from the Capra film. That line scared the shit out of me--I think the last time I could use it would have been 2002, and even then it was during my mother's illness. Once she died, my opinion mattered little in how my father, brother, and I would proceed in terms of legally and ceremoniously.

2002. Imagine being expendable for 9 years.

Read on, dear reader.

Gift Horse Oral Analysis

2011-01-08T08:29:00.000-08:00

I have been in a good funk for nearly two weeks now. What gives?

Best not to look too closely. :)

But it may have something to do with the fact that I haven't broken any resolutions yet...and have no plans to.

Read on, dear reader.

Resolutions, a Work in Progress

2010-12-26T09:30:00.000-08:00

Good morning, kids, and welcome to a long-lost blogger. Posting here will probably prompt a barrage of crap from a number on-line pimp stores for Asian porn (don't ask me why, they tend to love me), but I'll risk it to post my latest offering, a work in progress we like to call "New Year's Resolutions."

Here's the first draft:

Try one new thing every day
Do not buy any new books in 2011--if I want to read a book, I have to beg, borrow, or steal.
Do not buy any new pens in 2011--I have enough now to last me through Armageddon.
Give up Facebook.
Tweet more.
Blog more, regardless.

Read on, dear reader...hopefully. :)

On Writing

2010-07-11T10:59:00.001-07:00

I started a new blog specifically with a Facebook audience in mind yesterday, which was a long time in the thought process of coming. I was torn between several options:

Tearing down this blog and starting a new one (which might be a good idea given the continuing spamming of the Asian pimp circuit)
Starting a new blog with a different blog site, like Wordpress. At this point I realize that anyone who can go from Blogger to Wordpress probably should be in Mensa. I'm not at that level of savvy-ness yet, and, for the purpose of just importing the thing to Facebook anyway, probably don't necessarily need to be.
Just writing a note when I feel like blogging on Facebook. And that option seemed too immediate for some reason--and who wants to write a straight note, for heaven's sake? Shouldn't there be something fancy it links to?

So I sat down yesterday afternoon and knocked out a blog on Blogger in about ten minutes. Yes, I'll reap what I sow, I suppose, and, given enough time, talent, and desire to read instructions I could have killed with something fancier, but I opted against it. Learning what a networking site is for = priceless. So here's what roles mine has adopted:

Stories of what I love about California (blog)
Reviews of what movies I watch (used to be Netflix, until their app stopped working, and is now Flixter)
Reviews of books (Goodreads)
YouTube (usually of the music that I love)
And any news that goes to my core

That should suffice for now. This blog will remain, but not shared on Facebook--here is where I put my struggles, and, occasionally, a triumph or epiphany. And if you like that sort of thing...

Read on, dear reader.

Sitting With Fear

2010-07-05T19:45:00.000-07:00

Ever feel really stupid for being afraid, even while you're still afraid?

That's where I am this evening.

Two things are about to happen: the Johannes Mehserle trial is about to be over in Los Angeles and I'm about to have yet another summer of being extremely short-staffed at work. One way or another, a bone's gonna get broken--either because I have to work on the other side of the world, or because I have to work without enough help.

The *only* upside to this is that usually during times like this I lose an incredible amount of weight. Not in a good way--I either end up not getting to eat, or I lose whatever I eat within the hour of eating it and then stumble around dehydrated.

Ah, yes, stumbling. That's the part where I broke something last year.

The problem here is that I'm supposed to be smart enough to do this without completely killing myself and here I am again, unable to see forest for trees and feeling really dumb about the whole thing.

So here's my little prayer to God or the muses or whomever is listening--please make this be worse in my mind. Please don't let it come true. And if it has to come true, please let some good come from it...or find some way to make it end so that I don't have to keep doing it.

And what I've been reading to try to settle my nerves:

The poetry of Billy Collins
Tao Te Ching
Natalie Goldberg
And listening to anything calming I can find on my iPod

Just breathe, dear reader.

Damn. Baseball.

2010-07-02T04:45:00.000-07:00

It's been a rough stretch here in Mudville. And for a girl whose desk, up until yesterday, was covered with Giants' paraphernalia, it's been a shameful week. I work with men as a majority, and men don't care about fondness for a player or players, or even understand how I can have a fondness for THESE players, and I can't help it, which makes it worse.

When I joined the club called "Giants' fans," I was a long-time dormant baseball fan. The best part about baseball back in the states was the location of my apartment to the minor league ballpark and how they set off fireworks every other week right over my balcony. My first baseball game ever was in SBC Park (as it was called then)--I never saw the Cardinals or Royals play, or, even further back in the states, never saw the Tigers, Reds, Indians, or any Chicago team play (those were the closest geographical baseball locations in my childhood). My last passion for baseball was the Twins' victory in 1991, and that's because I had a crush on Kirby Puckett. And why did I have a crush on Kirby? Because he was a freak of nature--he didn't look like an athlete. From the point that I was aware of Kirby I started an unconscious hunt for players like him, players who didn't look like athletes, and I found a lot of them in baseball. Football players, basketball players, boxers--they all fit stereotypes most of the time, but not baseball players. In those days, baseball players looked like real people.

And then Kirby took drugs and went blind and died, and Sammy Sosa and Mark McGuire came along, and with college and work and steroid use by a lot of players I sort of forgot about baseball. I remembered it again when my brother took me to a game my third month here, but then it went back to sleep--the Giants still had Bonds at that point, and I wanted a team of real people. Post-Bonds (ironically, that looks like a sign you'd see on Bryant and 7th), I started to pay attention, and went to more games. The field was full of regular guys again--my favorite one at that time being Mike Matheny. Mike was followed by Omar, Dave Roberts...and I started knowing the names of the players. This year I knew them all, up until yesterday, and I knew their quirks and their challenges and their strengths. I knew their rituals. I knew their good-luck charms.

According to the men I work with, knowing these things are laughable.

Yes, Molina can no longer heavy-hit. Yes, Molina is a heavy runner. There are a million reasons to trade him. But here's what I'll miss...the big guy that calmed down pitchers, the gentle role model that jogged out to the Junior Giant standing at home plate who was waiting for a signed ball in Molina's girlish scrawl, and that grin...that grin that was so difficult to produce and nearly always impossible to see behind the mask, but that you'd catch from a team photographer occasionally. I'll miss, too, his brother coming to visit with the Cardinals and the way they greet each other at home plate, Yadier and Bengie, two big guys with the egos of monks.

In other words, I'll miss his special brand of humanity. Each of the Giant players has their own--Wilson with his crossed arms, Rowand and his magnetic physique that keeps drawing pitches, Pablo and his dance up to bat, Lincecum's hurl, arm back there somewhere in McCovey Cove, and then whiplashed past that hair and through the strike zone. Yes, they suck right now. We all suck at certain points in our lives, and get paid a lot less than these boys to do it. And goodness knows I would love to see wins or a pennant or anything substantial in the second half of the season. But those aren't the main reason I go to the ballpark. I go to see my boys. I can't help it. In the words of Dido--"I'm in love, and always will be."

Only a girl could bring Dido to the field. Swing on, dear hitter. Thanks, Bengie.

Men

2010-06-20T22:27:00.000-07:00

Today, of course, was Father's Day. Since my relationship with my father is far from great and I am currently in the process of getting over yet another unhealthy relationship, I spent much of today thinking and writing about men.

You would think that with my overall experience with men (with the exception of a few good male friends) that I would be one of those ball-busting men-haters by now, but that's far from it. I am beginning to think that it's men (on average) who hate me. I wish I knew why. I can tell you why I bored the shit out of my father, and how that may of contributed, but that doesn't clear up the picture completely. And I grow tired of blaming parents for my relationships now--God knows I have no room to talk since God won't trust me with a family, and they didn't really have a chance to learn how to do it better (I think they were just struggling to be as good as their parents. In the case of my mother she was a vast improvement, and in the case of my father I have to give him a gold star just for staying alive past my twenties).

Still, I struggle with men. It probably won't get easier the older I get, but I'm determined to stop making it so hard on me.

Tonight I heard from a friend that I haven't talked to on the phone in nearly five years, and his gift was such that I felt valued without feeling used. He's not married (yeah, I know--hard for me to imagine too), and we talked so easily and freely about books and movies and--wait for it--agriculture. I started out the morning childishly angry that I had to celebrate my father and ended it with a renewed appreciation for why I love men--their strength, their humor, the funny, awkward way that they love you. I remembered their gifts.

And maybe, just maybe, dear reader, they don't hate me after all.

Me

2010-06-19T20:02:00.000-07:00

I woke up this morning and wrapped music around my bicep.

I wrapped music around my bicep and shouldered my laundry bag.

I shouldered the laundry bag and dropped it off at the cleaners. I walked down the hill at a stagger that only gravity creates. I stopped by the bagel chain and picked up an egg and ham sandwich, which I took with me to the park at a clip. I listened to Toto sing "Africa." After eating the sandwich at the Music Concourse I stood by the evergreens and looked west.

And then I ran to the ocean. My blood burned. My blood burned and I ran out of breath and stopped to walk and gain it, then ran again, gained breath, ran again...

I didn't run this morning for the physicality of it, to get my body beautiful. I ran this morning to focus on ME. ME. I couldn't focus on anyone else, not fighting for air.

And it shone in my face...the whole day.

To the Asian Advertising Hopefuls

2010-06-08T04:55:00.000-07:00

This post is specially dedicated to the cluster of people who keep trying to advertise Asian girls in the comments section of my blog, and keep trying to do that advertising in Chinese--I'm now moderating my comments. No one could read them before because they weren't in English, and no one will have the chance to read them now.

I'm sorry that I couldn't help you more in your endeavors. You've annoyed me long enough, and I don't date women. If I did, your girls look like a lovely option, but I don't.

Spam someone else, dear reader.

Part the First - How to Care For a Self With No Self

2010-06-06T20:35:00.000-07:00

Today in my part of the City it was foggy, like a rainy-day gift in the Midwest. So I took the day to take care of my ego:

Writing, four and a half pages.
Reading, one hundred and sixty pages.
Importing music, 700 songs from CD to MP3 format.

And then I painted my toenails like a girl and relaxed in lamplight.

This is what I do when I'm not in love.

How to Marry a Millionaire

2010-05-30T08:07:00.000-07:00

Friday morning I had a meeting here in the City before making the pilgrimage to Oakland, and since the meeting was downtown, I stopped in at one of my favorite (and few remaining) bookstores--Alexander Book Company. On the remainder cart was a book that I had been looking for on the Kindle for some time, but could not find available--"Blonde" by Joyce Carol Oates. Oates wrote the book as a novel of the imagined inner torments of Marilyn Monroe, biography-style. I had previously tried the book in Missouri, but I was little more tender-hearted then--I couldn't make it through the beginning chapters where Norma Jeane's mother loses her mind. At one point I actually took out the bookmark, closed the book, and gave it to the library.

I figured I'd never be able to handle reading that book--and besides, in those days I thought Marilyn was a bimbo. A friend of mine had tried to introduce me to classic Marilyn comedies with "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes," "The Seven Year Itch," and, my friend's personal favorite, "How to Marry a Millionaire," and I thought they were acceptable cinema but I also felt they didn't warrant me watching them more than once.

Six years and four lessons in extramarital city-girl whoredom later, I feel as though I am strangely (and sadly) drawn to Marilyn's story and to the movie "How to Marry a Millionaire." I can read the book now without cringing, even though I'm aware that her life was a constant and ugly car wreck. I just pull of the delight of the lyricism that Oates brings, and I just watch with a kind eye.

Was it not a kind eye before? Were the characters just crazy Californians before? Was it because the story was so disintegrating? It's hard to say. Maybe, too, that I was thinking, "Oates, why do you have to make this so depressing?" Now I read it and stay suspended with it, instead of letting it drag me under. Now I read it and see my own humanity...the point, I suppose, of any art.

It's not that it got prettier. It's that I can handle the scene.

I spent yesterday afternoon in this book, and then drifted to booting up the computer and watching screen tests, interviews, and even painful footage from the final years. Since I'd never had much of an interest in Marilyn before, this was the first time I'd seen quite a bit of the clips, including the clip of Marilyn singing "Happy Birthday" to JFK. Since I had never seen it before, I thought it might be funny and entertaining...I went from being amused at the gentleman introducing her (she was late to the stage and he was trying to stretch for time) to being horrified at her performance. It didn't help having watched the Edward R. Murrow "Person to Person" interview prior to the JFK birthday clip. The Marilyn of Murrow was younger, fresher, and more articulate--a before and after snapshot compared to the JFK song. In the JFK clip (if you haven't seen it and have a queasy stomach I don't recommend watching) Marilyn stumbles to the podium, shed her wrap and gave it to the man who introduced her, and found the mic by tapping on it. Then she grabbed as though hanging on to a life-support system.

Ironically, in "How to Marry a Millionaire" Marilyn's character would have done the same thing--but only because she was portraying a woman who was tremendously nearsighted. In the birthday reception clip she was actually a woman who was tremendously stoned.

"Blonde" suggests at several points that a scene that is played out in the movies can be comedic in the movies and a nightmare in real life. Less than a decade separated "How to Marry a Millionaire" from the JFK reception, and the same scene is played by the same woman--the first one is funny, and the second one was hard to watch all the way through. At the reception she adjusts the mic, creaking it up and down with a lot of noise roughly, and then stands before it. She gives a shot at the opening lines of the song and is surprised to find no notes emerge. So the orchestra keeps with the introduction and she tries again.

And therein enters in the bimbo.

The movies I watched in Missouri were starring a brilliant woman playing bimbos. The footage I saw yesterday afternoon was a bimbo trying to be a brilliant comic. As she wrapped up the music I found myself fervently praying that the rumors of JFK sleeping with her were just rumors--because if he had in fact slept with her I was going to lose complete respect for him as a man. Correction: if he had slept with THAT, not "her." I think at that point there was no "her" left--she was no longer present. And would he want to sleep with her because he wanted Marilyn Monroe? He couldn't brag about it, for heaven's sake. Looking at her state at that time, why would he want to brag on it? Even worse...why would he be attracted to that? She wasn't just the body to men who met her...she states of Arthur Miller at one point in her career that "he wouldn't have married me if I were nothing but a dumb blonde." (That's not from the book but from an internet source.) It was the toxic combination of body and personality, and from the performance I don't see much personality left.

Maybe JFK was expecting the girl from "How to Marry a Millionaire." I know I was. That's why the change was so shocking. Still, I understand the change.

And in reading "Blonde," I am honing that understanding.

Coming Clean

2010-05-23T12:32:00.000-07:00

Today is another Shut Up and Write Marathon...I haven't attended one of these in a while, and I can tell that my body feels strange to be back. My mind doesn't know what to do with all that paper, for starters--"what? You want to focus on yourself for a bit? How the hell does that work?"--and then there is the need to write the first draft long-hand, which means that the hand gets tired. The sun is out but it's freezing cold out there--my mother's voice is at the back of my head demanding to know why I don't go outside and play anyway, because if you want cold Lord knows there are days in the Midwest where you spit and it sounds like you dropped your car keys.

So get out there.

F, no.

I'm too old for a lecture, Mom.

And yet I'm not. Over the last year I have made three monumental mistakes because I thought I deserved to make them in order to "feel good," which is sort of roughly on par with justifying smoking by saying you're stressed out by your mother's cancer. It doesn't make sense and makes perfect sense. The other night I came clean to a friend, ready, braced, for the lecture. Her response, "You aren't evil." YES, I AM. "Nope." As though what I had done was, well, human. (And I would repeat it here, but I'm still not sold on the part that I'm not evil. So saying it makes me a bit nauseous. I am my own crazy aunt at the family gathering.)

The lecture I got wasn't to stop, by the way--telling me to stop any kind of behavior is probably the least effective mode of getting me to stop. The lecture I got was to start worshipping myself, which is completely opposite from my normal behavior. About a month ago my boss gave me the assignment to complete a self-evaluation and then warned me not to get my feelings hurt when he got a hold of it and gave it back to me for not being harsh enough. I gave him an even, steady look and said, "Believe me, I'll make your idea of harsh look like a tea party." He shrank back a little in his chair. "You wouldn't stun me by sending it back," I continued. "What would stun me is if you kept it, liked it, or was kind to it. THAT would throw me off my game." And with that head's up he followed my advice and accepted it, which meant that I was back off balance.

Kindness usually puts me off. I don't know what to do with it, or how to thank those who bestow it. Sadly, since moving here, my thought process is that if you grant me kindness you must be ready to ask for something--and if you're a man the motives that cross my mind are twice as sinister. So the lecture of kindness that my friend gave me was on par with putting me in a blindfold and spinning me about 40 times and then telling me to find the door. She put the extra confusion in the mix by adding this to the lecture:

You have to be nice to yourself too. Kind to yourself. Worship yourself. Or you'll keep making this decision.

Oh shit. How the hell do I do that? Be nice? Worship? To THIS?

YEAH, TO THIS, JO. But how...

I'm about to find out. Be nice, dear reader.

Sunday Whisper

2010-05-16T10:03:00.000-07:00

I wanted breakfast.

I dressed, and left the mess in the bedroom.

I walked in the cold fog down the hill.

Two brioche, $4.50, taken from a ten.

Cross Irving, face 9th's light. The sidewalk work is done.

Bagel/egg sandwich. Cheese. Bacon that I didn't ask for. Bagel has pesto baked right inside.

Rooibos tea.

Back up the hill.

Back through the fog.

Back to the bedroom. Tea and food rested, strip, add pyjamas, push body under covers like crawling into a pool.

Flannel. Food. Gray light through the shade.

Whispered Sunday.

Diamondbacks

2010-05-16T07:24:00.000-07:00

So, I'm in the Mission District yesterday here in the City, and I am approached at one corner by a group of people wanting people to boycott the Giants/Diamondbacks matchup at AT&T Park about two weeks from now.

I'm all for making a statement, but this seems to be a cutting off of the nose to spite the face issue...aren't half the players in baseball from outside the US and south of the border? To give an example, here's the Diamondbacks' roster:

Arizona Diamondbacks Active Roster

Arizona Diamondbacks Active Roster
#	Pitchers	B/T	Ht	Wt	DOB
55	Blaine Boyer	R-R	6'3"	215	Jul 11, 1981
58	Juan Gutierrez	R-R	6'3"	210	Jul 14, 1983
15	Dan Haren	R-R	6'5"	215	Sep 17, 1980
22	Aaron Heilman	R-R	6'5"	225	Nov 12, 1978
46	Bob Howry	L-R	6'5"	220	Aug 4, 1973
36	Edwin Jackson	R-R	6'3"	210	Sep 9, 1983
31	Ian Kennedy	R-R	6'0"	195	Dec 19, 1984
13	Rodrigo Lopez	R-R	6'1"	185	Dec 14, 1975
50	Chad Qualls	R-R	6'5"	220	Aug 17, 1978
49	Carlos Rosa	R-R	6'1"	210	Sep 21, 1984
43	Cesar Valdez	R-R	6'2"	200	Mar 17, 1985
32	Esmerling Vasquez	R-R	6'1"	175	Nov 7, 1983
#	Catchers	B/T	Ht	Wt	DOB
28	John Hester	R-R	6'3"	220	Sep 14, 1983
19	Chris Snyder	R-R	6'4"	245	Feb 12, 1981
#	Infielders	B/T	Ht	Wt	DOB
3	Tony Abreu	S-R	5'9"	200	Nov 13, 1984
6	Stephen Drew	L-R	6'0"	185	Mar 16, 1983
2	Kelly Johnson	L-R	6'1"	205	Feb 22, 1982
25	Adam LaRoche	L-L	6'3"	205	Nov 6, 1979
11	Augie Ojeda	S-R	5'9"	175	Dec 20, 1974
27	Mark Reynolds	R-R	6'2"	220	Aug 3, 1983
4	Rusty Ryal	R-R	6'2"	200	Mar 16, 1983
#	Outfielders	B/T	Ht	Wt	DOB
5	Cole Gillespie	R-R	6'1"	205	Jun 20, 1984
34	Conor Jackson	R-R	6'2"	215	May 7, 1982
10	Justin Upton	R-R	6'2"	205	Aug 25, 1987
24	Chris Young	R-R	6'2"	200	Sep 5, 1983

Remote Control

2010-05-02T08:32:00.000-07:00

Something that one has to model in our day of technological advances is agility. And with that, I have to be agile enough to now give up television.

My roommate has a device called a Slingbox. If you don't know what a Slingbox is, I'll wait while you check it out on Wikipedia. I'm sure it's a wonderful device if you have access to it and are bored in mass transit somewhere, but I don't have access to ours and I'm not sure I would watch it if I did--what if someone else is already watching the tv and I change the channel?

I experienced the other end of this possibility yesterday when I was watching a movie and the channel changed. My assumption was that my roommate was on vacation to Mexico, and if I were on vacation in Mexico I think the last need on my mind would be "The Family Guy," but I have to give this situation the benefit of the doubt. Since I do pay for half the cable bill I switched the channel back, but then powered off the tv after that movie was done. About an hour after I did that the channel changed again. So I need to rethink my television habits.

At first, admittedly, I was annoyed. I pay half of a bill so that I can't watch? But it is a wake-up call too...where are my priorities, exactly? About the only thing that I'm really devoted to on television at this time is baseball--everything else is just noise to unwind with, and couldn't I unwind with noise that is a little more productive, like the 26 podcasts I'm still trying to whittle down? And baseball can be listened to on the radio, or I could go to a game, or go to a bar and watch a game (usually Pacific Catch plays them in my neighborhood). It's frustrating about the baseball thing, but for everything else, isn't it a lifesaver? I have so much that I want to do and just end up rotting in front of the tv most of the time to combat it--wouldn't it be better to combat it with working toward my goals of reading, writing, and fitness?

So change the channel to your heart's content, Family Guy. Read/write/run on, dear reader.

Inconsistent Success

2010-04-11T11:02:00.000-07:00

Here's a quick, abbreviated list of what I shine at:

Cooking
Writing
Teaching
Listening

And here's what destroys the above list and calls me a liar:

Focus

So lately everything has been crap, because I don't allow myself to focus. And when I don't allow myself to focus and develop focus through meditation, then the list shuts down and it looks like I don't know how to do anything at all.

THAT'S what I learned this week.

Herein ends the lesson, dear reader.

In Flight Movie

2010-04-04T19:35:00.000-07:00

I am training to do two things. See the pictures, attached.

So far, my obstacles have been getting a regular routine, not accomplishing a work/life balance, and nutrition. Not to mention having a constant cycle of abuse and recovery that I allow myself to ride.

Tomorrow morning, I am trying yet another routine--working out before work, and eating a packed lunch every day.

Simple, but REALLY challenging. We'll see if it works.

I'll keep you posted.

Go For Launch

2010-04-04T08:32:00.001-07:00

And this blog is no longer on Facebook. Now I can develop my writing and improve it. Not to mention hopefully having more of it.

Happy Easter, dear reader.

Test Again

2010-04-03T23:53:00.001-07:00

Think I got it this time...we'll find out...

Test

2010-04-03T21:18:00.000-07:00

I'm removing the blog from Facebook...and testing to see if this will post or if it's off the page.

Patterns In the Chaos? Possible?

2010-03-29T20:57:00.000-07:00

God, I hope so.

Right now, my life is run by a collection of people. This collection of people doesn't talk to each other much, even though they all belong to the same organization, so it's sort of like having an out-of-synch Greek chorus, all yelling their own lyrics, in their own time.

I'm not really a manager. I'm managed. Time management is no longer possible. And I'm imploding.

Which means I'm probably about less than a week from a monumentally dumb decision. I'm already making small ones, just to show that I still can decide something, that I'm still in charge of something. I make dumb decisions about my health, my work, my limits...and the next step that usually happens is that I do something really dumb, like sleep with the wrong person, buy an item I can't afford and don't need, or...

Break a bone.

By the way, the number of people in my Greek chorus is 23. All with their own agenda. And they outnumber the amount of people in my support system. By quite a large count.

Time to decide what's important and tell the Greek chorus to go smoke a muse. And less of what's important and more of WHO is.

Like me. Before I lose me.

The Latest Notes From Sea Level

2010-03-28T13:53:00.000-07:00

{Poster's Note: The following was taken from a longhand journal entry during a Meetup "Shut Up and Write" session on Sunday, March 28th, 2010.}

I miss writing when I don't get to do it. I love everything about it. I am even enamored by the materials--papers in different weights, different bindings on cahiers, different pens (the only thing I won't write with is a ballpoint pen, blech), different coffee shops, differing light, the music that gets me started. Then there is the font when the second draft is typed, whether it is generated on paper or on-line, the package, the typeface, the binding. Pages--even or uneven, and the texture of the paper. Everything creating a tome thrills me.

I thought about such things last night during Earth Hour. During Earth Hour I had shut off the lights, the computer, the phone, the iPod, the Kindle--anything electronic or electric. I lit candles and sat next to their light with a glass of wine and started to read from a paper book, Isabel Allende's "My Invented Country." Soon, however, the lowering wax and untrimmed wicks created some very active flame in the candles, and the flickering was too hard on my eyes. I closed the book and did some stretches on the floor, breathing evenly to inspire meditation, but couldn't get in the zone. I blamed the wine and moved back to the couch with said wine and had a dialogue with God about what I love about writing.

I have been writing a long time--in one form or another since I was six years old. I even love the psychology and sociology of writers. Where they write, how they write, how alike and how different they are within countries and continents. I love the ironic fact that I love Dostoyevsky and hate Tolstoy, but that I think both Allende and Garcia Marquez are magical. I love any history of writing. I love any language, even though the only two that I understand are English and some French. Every moment that I reached an answer God came back with a deeper question.

What would be better, that was the ultimate one.

Most of the authors I can name are classic authors--I know very few up-and-comers. That is something I would like to change. I would like to be more well-versed in publishing. I would like more structure in my blogs. {Poster's Note: I'm sure my readers would like more structure in my blogs as well.} I would like more consistency in my postings. I would like the writing to improve. I want to be better at editing. I want to say more of what I mean rather than just get the idea down on the blog and then walk away from it.

That question of what would better stumped me last night during Earth Hour, and I'm finally answering it the next day. I was afraid to answer it last night for fear that I wouldn't get or give the right answer. Now I realize that any answer is a better one than waiting. The answer may change, and I have to be ready for the answer to change--that's adaptability in motion.

Now, to act on it. I want a blog. Seriously. One with a continuous line of plot, you might say. And so here we go, with a line. Creating a continual line in a long-term blog strikes me as the same kind of challenge that the Apollo 13 astronauts had in keeping to course when they used the moon's gravity to slingshot themselves back to Earth. Most of the course is determined by that gravity, but at one point they had to correct the trajectory so that they stayed in within the narrow window of re-entry without bouncing off the atmosphere when they return. The astronauts couldn't fire up the instrumentation due to a power shortage, so they had to find a fixed horizon point--in their case, keep the moon within a certain window. Trouble is, when they fired up the boosters the thrust pushed them all over the place, and not just in a straight line to the course. They knew this would happen, but they knew that they could get the correction needed if they could manage to straighten it out in the last ten seconds of the thrust and keep the moon in that window for the last ten seconds. So the first ten seconds of the thrust were quickly learning stabilization--the last ten were for the actual correction. It was a harrowing 20 seconds, but they accomplished it, and made their narrow window.

To give you an idea of how narrow the window was at that time, newscasters of the event described it as trying to put a basketball through a space the thickness of a sheet of paper.

That's the kind of narrow focus that I have to get myself to. Sooner or later, I have to master the 20 second booster power.

The moon's gravity I already have.

Power's Out

2010-03-27T23:13:00.000-07:00

Tonight was Earth Hour from 8:30-9:30 pm. I love Earth Hour when it arrives every year, and not because I can save the environment.

It's because for an hour I light some candles and get some peace from the constant yammering that is in fact technology. (How ironic...I just read something about this about a week ago...)

I lit my candles, poured a glass of white wine, and picked up copies of paper books that I'm reading and felt really good for an hour. Like a vacation.

Hope you got a chance to experience it too, dear reader.

Filed in the "You've Got to Be Kidding" Department

2010-03-15T21:05:00.000-07:00

For those of you who follow along in my dating life, you will remember a guy standing me up at the end of January.

Today he called to ask if I was "still mad."

Mad? No...but I don't give a rat crap if you exist, Mister.

It's MARCH. I barely remember your last name.

Collide

2010-03-14T14:29:00.000-07:00

For this exercise, we have to take a trip through time. We have to go back to last summer, to the last day of July. You are going to meet four beings--Tom (my then boss), Thompson (still an employee), my right side, and Anna (my friend and physical therapist).

In the afternoon of this day in question, Tom and I had just back from lunch, and I had strapped in to all of my work gear--what I call my cop belt of box cutters, pens, two-way radio, multi-tool, etc--right out of the gate, there was an issue at our building's ship dock. The dock is split into three bays, two in a sunken entry and one with an ascending ramp, and six vehicles were trying to get into the three bays. Earlier in the morning Tom and I had discussed leaving one of the long, heavy steel sled carts (called sled carts because they run low to the ground) at the dock area so that we wouldn't have to go get a cart every time UPS dropped off a whole cluster of packages. I was willing to give it a try--had a funny feeling about it, but wasn't allowed to really think about it because I had to get on to the next damn thing in a hurry, as always. So I left the cart there that morning. Low to the ground. And forgot about it. Didn't see it anymore. And in directing/stopping/starting six trucks in three spaces, I ran to stop a truck from backing and flipped in the air over the cart, coming down hard on my right hand and, to learn later, my right side.

The next image I have is looking up at Thompson upside down and him looking down at me--"are you trying to breakdance?" I pursed my lips and staggered to stand up, and then immediately tried to sit down on something when my hand started to swell. Get the rings off, get the bracelet off. "Squeeze my hand," commanded Thompson, about five inches from my face, and I yelled at him to back up before I might throw up on him. He refused to back up. "Look at my face," he said again, sternly. "Now squeeze my hand." I couldn't muster any muscle, and the hand was full of liquid--the nerves had already been severed. "Oh, well," he joked, "It's just 'cause you're a girl." "Give me your hand again," I growled through clenched teeth, and I gripped all my pain through my left hand. "Nope," he gasped, "there's something wrong with your right hand."

Follow that scene with weeks of not being able to rise up in body, followed by fear of falling, of not being able to stir, or scrub, or buckle a belt or bra. Slip-on shoes, so I wouldn't have to bend over. Splints tightened, loosened, tightened again. And standing sometimes with the overwhelming feeling of flashback, as though I were falling while standing still, my body all the time remembering.

My right side, at the moment, is therefore holding a grudge against me. The right leg will suddenly, inexplicably drag, and then spring back to muscle. The right side tenses and then relaxes like a rag doll when I need it. Muscles from the elbow to the knuckles will suddenly shut down, leaving me to drag boxes, light switches, pens...all by sheer stubborness. The right ankle gives.

A...cripple.

And then I finally visited Anna, my miracle of a physical therapist in a massage therapist. Through her, I learn what is going on. While my left side is normal (and sometimes even trying to take on extra work), my right side has spent seven months, day in and day out, minute by minute, punishing me. The force of me slamming my own body on concrete and steel, and then screaming for me not to stand upright and losing that argument, and then getting angry at me picking up stuff, HEAVY stuff, too, damn you Sarah, and the continued abuse and recklessness despite the fact that you broke a fucking bone, bitch...there's no love lost the other way, either, because that was SEVEN MONTHS AGO--WHY ARE YOU STILL NUMB AND DRAGGING?

WHY CAN'T YOU LIFT THE WORLD ANYMORE?

Then the right side and I are still and quiet for a second, staring darkly at each other and panting heavily...wanna go again? Huh? Do you?

Here's what we fight about:

typing
putting on belts
unhooking the two-way radio from it's bracket to talk into it
putting loose change in pockets or jars
accepting loose change (CUP YOUR PALM, DAMN YOU)
scrubbing pots, bowls, or anything with a lip on it
unplugging USB cords
holding cylindrical items while standing
holding and using chopsticks (I still haven't won this fight)
mascara application (who's up for a black eye?)
inserting earrings

On most of these I win three times in a row and the lose a few. Spasm or stroke, and the right side wins. I trip over my right knee, crap out the spelling of a word on the drag of my hand, and then I have to stop, or lose my temper.

Or burst into tears, if I have had combat all day long and had to drag the right side all day long.

According to Anna, this fall was too big a deal--we're going to be fighting a good, long time. Here's where I feel some relief, though--when she takes over for the hour, I just lie there. SHE is fighting with it, not me. My right side, fully suspicious of me treating it with any kind of kindness, and wary of outside force, tenses up to the point of flight. Anna has a job on her hands, and it's my right side sparking and whiplashing in fear. My left side sighs, relaxes, rolls its eyes even, and my right side HOWLS. We have the same stupid argument, only now the right side is kicking and screaming, breaking our heart, with a witness. "Relax," she says. "Let me work." I am. Well, the left side and core are. The right side and its memories are filing lawsuits, screaming for the police, but mostly FIGHTING. "If I fall you're going down with me," sing The Dixie Chicks.

And we do.

Someday, I'm promised, we won't.

The Corrections, or, Impassioned Red Pen

2010-03-14T12:29:00.000-07:00

This post is coming to you live from a writing marathon that I am participating in today...and it seemed timely, so I thought I would throw it in here and move on. Had a bit of a hiccup with my writing self-esteem last night, but as with any great challenge, you can let it stop you or use it for good. So I'm using it for a blog topic.

I have never known many readers or writers in my circle of friends, regardless of where I've lived. Back in the States most people are either armchair sports or movie fans, and here the primary focus seems to be technology (says the girl with the Kindle) and socializing. There are book clubs, but the time spent on the books themselves seems cursory--"let's get on and talk about our lives." I am surrounded on busses and trains by people who read, but they are reading--who wants to discuss with a spur-of-the-moment stranger? This was part of the reason I went back to college as many times as I did--that, and with most literary dialogues outside of the classroom people are sometimes talking to sound smart and not to freely exchange ideas. If someone walked into one of my college classrooms with that agenda the professor usually cut them off--we're not paying good money so that one person can hear their own voice. Something that also fascinated me about critiques in the classroom vs critiques in a book club is that in the classroom if you are dealt a crappy book, you make the best of it. If you are dealt a crappy book in a book club you either don't show up for the discussion, don't participate when you do show up, or diss the book the entire time in response to passages others were passionate about.

There were several books that I adored in college, particularly in my upper level classes. I got lucky--I had an advisor who had nearly the same tastes in books that I did. He was just different enough to lend challenge. Occasionally he picked a book that stopped me short--like choosing Ford Madox Ford's "The Good Soldier." He recognized the fight of that book, and at our first discussion session he asked, "Okay, who wants to throw this book as hard as they can against the wall?" My hand shot up and my face had frustration written all over it. "Ooookay...so WHY do you want to throw this book against the wall?" And so began the study of a book I hated and a story and discussion that I loved. In a book club we probably would have never known the effectiveness of the why, whether it rooted for the negative or the positive. In the classroom we learned out loud, and had a dialogue.

Strangely, I can make a similar comparison in my writing courses and writing experience. My best writing teachers guided me to write a better message and recognized what I was trying to say, without stopping me on syntax, grammar, and spelling. As difficult as it is to believe now, I used to shine at mechanics, so if I missed something it wasn't monumental. I don't think my instructors were ignoring my mistakes (like they weren't going to ignore my dislike of a book I was assigned to read)--I think instead they recognized that the message was important to acknowledge and develop first, and then we'll repaint the ship with mechanics. They knew that I was only human--dangling modifiers escape us all occasionally. On the flip side, some of my worst writing teachers didn't want to address my grasp of concept and instead dwelled on whether I ended the f-in' sentences with prepositions. Forests vs. trees. In addition to repainting the ship before it was fully built, these instructors would flog me publicly for such mechanical errors--"Look world! She says she is a good writer, but she changed tenses in the third sentence! Send her to the gallows of failure!" That kind of behavior made me never want to write for that person again.

Which brings me to the second part to this sequence, which is non-writer and non-reader impressions of me as a reader or writer.

For nearly all of my life, even when I was a child, people have avoided sending me written messages of any kind. When I ask why, I get the response that they think I sit on my end of the exchange with a fat, brightly- or brazenly-inked pen and mark all of their mistakes on the page. Hardly. Mind, I DID do that briefly during my studies getting my Associates degree, but I found that people I did that to (including, I'm ashamed to say, my mother) stopped writing to me. I craved written words like water. So I stopped the critiques of letters and e-mails and just gazed at the picture, happy with it regardless of syntax. People still think, though, that because I am a writer I will correct their mechanics. Simply by being a writer I am, in their eyes, in a default position of written perfection.

Not by a long shot, obviously. And I don't even strive to be that way. I strive to be an accessible artist.

The same thing goes for my reading choices. I do get a lot of reading suggestions, but others hesitate to suggest something because a) they feel that I'm going to laugh at them, or b) that I won't be able to understand their sophisticated choice. Again, I can understand the misconception--an intense reader of literature is the fullest form of story snob--but I read mainstream stuff too. Harry Potter, Carl Hiassen, Dennis Lehane...etc. Do I like crime? Do I like mystery? Do I like fantasy? Not as a rule. Do I like the character of Harry Potter? Honey, I'm in love. Do I like the works of Dennis Lehane? Nobody tells a story like him. I won't be limited by genre and I won't avoid pieces within a genre, either. I just want a story well-told.

I find, too, that I gravitate to authors and readers who want accessibility in the story and can overlook a flaw or two in the mechanics for the moment. Can this person relate? Or are they looking for a reason to be superior or dismiss someone?

If you can relate, dear reader...keep reading and writing. My red pen is never used for correction, unless you want me to use it on you, and I will read a dime store novel if the plot keeps me.

Carry on.

Oscar the Grouch

2010-03-07T07:53:00.000-08:00

I spent the early hours of the morning this morning copying the list of Academy Award Nominees to my Netflix que. I'm one of those neurotic people who doesn't have much time for herself, and my theory is that when I get to watch a movie or read a book they better be good ones, dammit, because otherwise it's a waste of time.

So I pull my movie recommendations and reading lists from awards.

Pause for the sound of crickets.

It probably makes me a snob, but it also lends to some sort of obligation--if the suggestions are coming from academy-based lists, shouldn't they be good? But I once tried to read "Anna Karenina" from Oprah book club list and couldn't handle it.

Perhaps it's better to "waste time" with a good-looking trailer or cover.

How I Wrote...And Now Write...and Will End Up Writing

2010-02-28T15:01:00.000-08:00

Talk about a lesson in English tense forms. Everyone got those? Now let's move on to the verb "to eat."
Last year, after my Cal class ended and then my work injury, I didn't write much. This condition led to a New Year's resolution that I still have yet to keep--write three pages daily. What's strange about this resolution is that if you were to count the number of pages written in my journals to the number of days so far in the year, I'm over the count, not under. But I'm not writing them daily. I'm writing a whole slew of them to make up for the daily. I'm writing guilty.

However, the pages that are coming out are getting better. So here's the next steps:

Write daily
Re-read what I write

Let's add those for March. I want my words, I want pages, and I want to write exactly what I mean.

How My Writing Group Works

2010-02-21T11:42:00.000-08:00

In the past week, two people have asked me how my writing group, Meetup’s “Shut Up and Write” operates. So I thought I might take a minute and explain.
This group makes more sense, by the way, if you are familiar with Natalie Goldberg’s technique in “Writing Down the Bones” and other books of hers. The group pretty much strives for a Zen state in a writing practice.
The group meets in some form or another throughout the week in various locations—Berkeley, Palo Alto, SF’s Mission district. The Tuesday night group was my first and the one I drift back to. It was originally organized by a guy who put it in a bookstore in the Ferry Building. I did try to attend that meeting, but the group was hard to find and a little unfriendly by default of apathy. So I gave up on that one, but occasionally checked on the reviews of members. When I saw a new organizer take over, at a different location, I decided to try again.
The café where we meet is a place called Crossroads, in San Francisco’s South of Market (SoMA) district. The café is nestled in among high rises of condominiums and along the Embarcadero—there is no view of the water, but there’s a feeling of the water being close. The neighborhood is clean, quiet, a little on the dark side, and easily accessible on the N or T lines during the week.
Crossroads is operated by a group that only hires men and women from halfway houses who are trying to get clean. All of the staff wear t-shirts that say “Crossroads Café” on the front and on the back, “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.” Crossroads is spacious, with two halves and a patio. Our group usually takes up the bookstore half. We start trickling in and making camp at around 7:30, and the organizer takes his personal items and spreads them out over several tables, in order to “save” them. He sets up a sign at one of the tables with “Meetup” in red and white letters on one side and “Shut Up and Write” on the other side of the sign.
I usually set down my bags and order food at the counter. Dishes are Crossroads are your normal café fare, except for the fact that they give you a lot of it for very little money. You can also order wine and beer, and depending on the day and whether or not my mind is going to cooperate for an hour, I may have to partake of a glass of chardonnay.
After ordering I set up. I try to get a table to myself even though we’re in a group—I write longhand, and I find it entirely too distracting to worry about shaking the table and/or someone shaking the table for me. If we have a lot of people and I do have to share, I usually write on a notebook in my lap. I set up my table with a notebook, pens that will work with the paper that I have (at present I am using a notebook with a kind of shiny paper that won’t take to my fountain pens well, so the only thing that won’t skip and blank out on this paper is fine point Sharpie markers), iPod, and reading glasses (which help me focus if I get tired). I do not pull out my phone. This is my time, and since the organizer is keeping time of the session, there’s no need for me to even check it.
At around 8:10 pm the organizer calls us to order and we fall into introductions. The correct introduction is to say your name and then say “I’m writing ______.” You do NOT say “I’m trying to write _____.” WEAK. We are here and we are writers. And everyone is writing something different. In past meetings I have heard the following:
· A travelogue
· A science fiction novel
· Poetry
· Journaling
· A young adult novel
· A television script
· A videogame
· A book review
· A short story
· A memoir
· A feature story/interview
· A letter to a mother
A couple of these have been mine—I’ll let you guess which ones (and think outside the box here).
By the way, the introductions are just that brief, too: “I’m Sarah and I’m writing a story about macaroons.” The purpose of the evening has to fit in a sentence—we are here to write, not describe what we are writing. After we have all introduced ourselves, the organizer says something to the effect of “Great! Let’s write for an hour.” And we apply headphones if we’ve got ‘em and plow into pages and laptops. There is no talking among us. We are given an hour to write, and that’s what we’re gonna do, dammit. A good measure of us, due to family and work commitments have fought hard for that hour. We GO. Socializing was before the session and will come again after with the other writers. For now we are a giant machine, churning out hundreds of words per minute, fueled by the fact that if we stopped or got up we would assault our own rhythm and kill the rhythm of the group. It’s stunning—the force is so quiet and felt only the members, but it is a force of hurricane winds. When people re-emerge at the other side of the hour you can see that they left their bodies and minds somewhere during that time period, and are stunned to return. I put it akin to taking one of my literature exams in college—you have this amount of time to write something meaningful, so for God’s sake don’t stop.
There are regulars to these sessions, and then there are newbies, semi-regulars (folks who come once a month instead of every week), regulars who come back after significant time out (c’est moi), and the orgnanizer, who on Tuesday nights is usually a whimsical guy from St. Louis in curly hair who loves people. I spend all damn day with people, but not writers, so this group gives me support with the boundaries that I need, while he writes from home all day, so when he arrives to the group he travels from table to table before and after session, actively probing and listening to us talk about our projects.
The first few times I went I was all distracted by the concept of the group, and then after a few turns I let my mind split open and I was set free from the distraction of the romance. Gradually I got very good at shutting off the world and burying myself in a story or piece that I was working on.
When I took a writing class at the Cal Berkeley extension last spring I withdrew from the writing group for a little while to devote all of my time to the class. Shortly after that I broke my hand at work, and the healing process that followed kicked me out for months. In the late fall of last year I stepped back in, trying for once a month, grateful for the time but very afraid that the hand wouldn’t be able to go an hour straight. Yes, the hand did suffer at first, but it gets easier each time.
During the time before the class and the hand injury I had visited other spin-off sessions of the group in the Mission district, with a different organizer. I disappointingly found that I didn’t enjoy it as much and couldn’t get down to writing—either the venue was off, or the organizer didn’t have the same passion for the session that the SoMA organizer (Rennie), did. I found it to be like attending church with a lay-minister—the message is still there, but the delivery didn’t inspire.
More and more I had heard lately of different members talking about another session on Saturdays and Sundays called Shut Up and Write: SF Marathon, in which members write for the ENTIRE DAY. At first I dismissed it—with my hand, how could I do that?—but more and more it sounded like the new challenge that I needed. My mind’s focus power had gotten used to the hour-long session…it was time to change it up. I just didn’t want to cause damage to a hand that was and is still healing. However, I thought of it this way: this is something that I love to do, a part of me since I could read. I would be giving myself the time of a whole day of devotion to what I loved. If you think of it in terms of other professions or callings, then think of cowboys who endure broken bones and other scarring injuries in handling the ranch, or women who willingly want a pregnancy even though they know it’s going to completely wreck their bodies.
Fuck the hand, I thought. Let’s go for it.
The practice of writing for a day was an experience roughly on par with the early days of the one-hour Tuesday night sessions—I would emerge dazed and snapping off synapses of wonder. By the end of the marathon my hand felt like tenderized veal and my mind knew exactly what to do to built an equivalent to a space mission. I looked at the stages of progression of mind in this way:
Mind is complaining/too much in the world
…then…
Mind is blank (this phase was scary so early in the process, since I had a whole day in front of me)
…then…
Mind is a mess, but starting to fire off ideas and insight
…then…
True chaos. Everything wants to be heard in the mind and is screaming to be louder than the rest of the things wanting to be heard
…then…
Multi-colored chaos, starting to stream in pattern
…then…
The most intricate and detailed pattern on the planet, moving at the speed of light
And then I was out of time. My hand couldn’t take any more, and my brain was running on hydrogen. I started to hate my hand—“IMAGINE WHAT WE COULD HAVE DONE.” A friend of mine this past week reminded me…the hand is still healing. I look normal but the body remembers. And so in writing this I can forgive the hand. I can forgive it for holding its grudge, and my mind can forgive it because the hand got me to the point of space flight. That hand will take me even farther someday.
Write on, dear reader.

Shutes and Ladders

2010-02-07T16:36:00.000-08:00

While the rest of the world watches saints and colts, I watch an extraordinary personae walk through shutes and ladders.

On Friday the NPR radio program "Fresh Air" did a tribute to animal husbandry scientist Temple Grandin. They were honoring her work because HBO was debuting this weekend with a movie about Temple. I have to admit, the idea of the movie didn't light me on fire--Temple is a difficult woman to listen to, and after "Beautiful Mind" and "Awakenings" a person starts to feel a little tapped out on overcoming the mind movies. But it's SuperBowl weekend, I have the remote, and I was treating myself to a good meal with ingredients from the farmers' market anyway, so why not? What else was I going to watch? Football? Netflix? What's to gain, really, there? The movie was new and the "Fresh Air" broadcast was interesting in that I thoroughly enjoy anyone who offers a fresh approach to understanding animals and our relationship to them.

The movie was stunning not just for the ideas, but the presentation--like a really good stew presented in a four-star restaurant style. Like the movie "A Beautiful Mind," "Temple Grandin" portrayed her life as she would have seen it. In "A Beautiful Mind" we see how Nash's mind works, and we see the same special effects in "Temple Grandin." The one thing that continually struck me was how little so many people tried to understand her--it didn't surprise me, just struck me. The indifference and the ridicule from most of the world served to make the characters who did wait to take in the patience with her more significant--folks like her mother, her caretakers, her science teacher, her later bosses, and so on.

The viewer also forgets that she watched Claire Danes several times too--I kept thinking I was watching Temple in real life. The ideas explored made sense--want to save time? Then make everyone in the process calmer. I imagine this was difficult for Grandin to convey, since she isn't known for her calm demeanor. Nonetheless, there's a lot to be said for human behavior by studying animals.

And now, for the Netflix.

My Significant Other

2010-01-31T08:59:00.000-08:00

There's a scene in the movie "Jerry Maguire" where Renee Zellweger's character explains her reasoning for dating Jerry Maguire to Bonnie Hunt's character. She states that most men she has been with can be beat with a "good book and a warm bath."

I'm there.

And I'm not a man-hater or man-eater. I don't hate men. And while I don't believe that men hate me, I just believe that they have never looked at me. Or want to. They want to use me for something, but they don't want to look at me.

So a friend of mine had a great idea that I'm finally trying. I'm not available. I'm dating me. If a guy asks me out, I'm seeing someone. Me.

I picked me because I'm tired of looking outside of myself for validation that I won't get.

Love on, dear reader.

Sell Me

2010-01-30T06:38:00.000-08:00

For those of you in tune with my Facebook statuses, you learned about two weeks ago that I was to have a date today, details to follow. There will be no details. The date will not be occurring, due to a recent lack of interest by the asking party.

What's odd is that I'm relieved. The guy who asked me out is a seller for my company, and my experience with sellers is that they tend to lean toward the flaky side--there's a few competent ones (my brother is a seller for his company), but most say they will do something for you and then forget, or that they will get you information and then forget. What struck me into thinking he might be different is that he knows that the other men in my past have been shallow pricks, and he knows that I have a very low threshold for bullshit. Yet, despite all of this I saw him on Tuesday and no details were mentioned of said date, and seeing me didn't jog his memory about the date. I would have even thought he would have called me later that day--nope. Not on his priority list.

Strangely though, as I said, I'm relieved. I enjoy talking to him, and I think about him sometimes for no reason, but I was never physically attracted to the guy. And it's a relief that I can now let him go emotionally as well.

On to the next...

Docter's Appointment

2010-01-30T06:13:00.000-08:00

Let me just say this--it's rare when I get to meet a famous person. I usually just brush by them or spot them. Here's a running list of whom I've glimpsed:

Kenny Rogers
Al Gore
Danny Glover
Sean Penn
Andy Williams

(Strange, they are all men. The women, I've met. E.g., Natalie Goldberg.)

And now we can add Pete Docter to the list.

For those of you who don't know Pete, you may know his creations better--he was the director of "Up" and "Monsters Inc," as well as working hip deep in other Pixar productions. This past Thursday I was invited to a business breakfast with a collection of other business leaders in Oakland and San Leandro who have worked with the Alameda County Food Bank, and our speaker was Pete Doctor. When you first get a glimpse of Pete, you note how tall he is, and then you notice his relaxed sense of humor. He talked to us using a presentation staged on his Mac, sort of hiding behind the projector (he says himself that he is introverted), and he explained the teamwork and processes of putting a movie together at Pixar. What stood out to me most was his stressing to TRY ANYTHING, which was comforting. This isn't working? Try anything. This could be better? Try anything. The company that I work for has a lot of what is called "standard work" in place, so to hear this was refreshing.

The other statement that stood out for me was the theme that Pete stated they were shooting for in "Up," and that's the idea of there is more adventure in relationships than in travel/dares/extreme sports/etc. I noticed before in a blog post from years ago that Californians seem to be real physical daredevils, but emotionally I hadn't seen them take a lot of risks. (Coincidentally, last week's homily at church talked about how less of a scary investment it is to avoid kindness. This wasn't an endorsement by the minister, just an observation, which is true.) Docter, an introvert and a Midwesterner, perhaps observed the lack of emotional risk too when he developed "Up" to present to crew at Pixar.

By the way, the "tiny mailman" in "Up?" Based on a real kid named, shockingly, Russell. Docter's son has a friend named Russell who looks just like this kid, and he described him as the kid who "blasts through the front door and says, "I'm here Mr. Docter--didya miss me?" "And that," said Docter, "is how I met Russell."

Take a risk, dear reader. Blast into a relationship. :)

Too Crowded In There

2010-01-23T11:07:00.000-08:00

So I was "lean"-ing up my bedroom/office this morning (to use Toyota-speak), and listening to podcasts, particularly to yesterday's reprise of an earlier "Fresh Air" broadcast. Terry was speaking with author Jonah Lehrer about his book "How We Decide," which is a book about why it is so difficult for many of us to make any decision, simple or complex as it may be.

During one point in the interview Lehrer talked about a study that had been done regarding how our stress load or daily build-up of decision making can affect our ability to make a healthier decision later in the day. I listen to these podcasts as a passive listener most of the time, but at this point in the interview I started to pay closer attention. I've often said that I make incredibly dumb decisions in my personal life because I'm burnt out from mental exertion at an incredible pace at work. The study that Lehrer spoke of seemed to confirm this. Two groups of people were involved in this study--one group of people was given a two-digit number to memorize, and the other group of people was given a seven-digit number to memorize. After having memorized their numbers, both groups were taken to a cafeteria to have a snack--their choice of a slice of frosted devil's food cake, or a dish of fresh, mixed fruit. The subjects who were asked to memorize the two-digit number chose more fruit than the subjects who were asked to memorize the seven-digit number. Lehrer explains that this happens because the part of your brain that makes a decisions is also the same part of the brain that is used for problem-solving.

So, he says, if you have a hard day at work or you spend the morning doing a difficult crossword puzzle, you should be aware of this when you make a decision later in the day.

In other words--not to dismiss your actions because of this, but--GIVE YOURSELF A BREAK.

No wonder my personal life decisions have sucked for so long.

Give yourself a break, dear reader.

Don't F With My Happy

2010-01-21T17:38:00.000-08:00

My warehouse guy, one of the employees who now hates me because my tolerance for stupidity is gone (and it's absence embraced by my new boss), has a phrase he likes to say, thus:

"No one gets to f with my happy."

Never mind that I'm f-ing with his happy because I'm asking him to work. Let's focus on this--every day of my job is a conscience effort on my part to not necessarily be giddy, but happy. Happy in that hour.

This post helped.

My employees haven't shown me that they like me any more with it, but I like myself a lot more for it.

I also wanted to thank someone in print for helping me today and continuing to patiently help me when I teeter on the cusp of jumping off the racking at work...thanks, Tina. Thanks for being available and thanks for the opportunity to keep each other in check. I hope I help, too.

There may be no I in TEAM, but there is a reason to focus on I for awhile.

Thanks, Gretchen and Tina. Thanks to my roommate for dinner. And thanks to Trish for well wishes. Now, back to an after-work cocktail.

Stay thirsty, dear reader. ;)

In English

2010-01-21T17:31:00.000-08:00

That's it.

I have to learn Spanish and Cantonese, to start with.

I experienced two breakdowns in communication today--the first one in Spanish at 5 am, when I was supposed to sync up with a systems analyst for a computer re-image with a tech from Chicago who couldn't get it together but thought it might be easier in Spanish. The other one occurred tonight when I was too tired to remember to beep the garage pass for the car at UCSF and had to pull a ticket instead. The Chinese parking attendant thought it might be best to shout at me continually louder in the English words that he knew, which is what I used to do when I lived in the Midwest with English, so I felt bad for the guy. I also felt bad for the guy that I was too tired to continue with him and told him I would take care of it, and walked away to call City Car Share.

I need to make it easier on these people.

I need to learn Spanish and Cantonese.

Maybe that should be the goal instead of childrearing.

;)

Drive on, dear reader.

Prix Fixe

2010-01-16T06:41:00.000-08:00

Let's keep it simple, I said to myself last night as I stepped off the long amusement park tram that is Bay Area Rapid Transit in the Embarcadero station. I could have traveled from there to any destination in the City for drinks and dinner, but I wanted to go home, I wanted my lights by the Park, my rustic, Eddie Bauer-laden, UCSF-student-soaked slope to the tall trees. So I stopped for the fat Specialty's cookies that I miss by not working in the City and then hopped a number 6, Sunset-bound. I stepped in the apartment, loaded laundry, changed into jeans, and went to the Park's edge for Pacific Catch.

Catch is all fish, all the time--I usually end up with a bowl of brown rice, seaweed, salmon, wasabi, etc., etc. But when they brought me the menu, they had added a prix fixe tribute to Costa Rica, with a fresh soup, bright, barleyed entree, and then the strangest sounding dessert of all time, tres leches--cake soaked in milk with prickly pear sauce. Ummm, okay. Do they know what things soaked in liquid look like? Taste like? And this is Pacific Catch, mind you. They aren't really known for striking innovation. Part of my wonder, though, is in tasting things that I never knew before California, and Costa Rican cuisine would definitely fall in that space. I took the house white wine (a label called Ladybug...dunno what that means) and then ordered coffee with dessert.

The slice of cake came out on a plate, like a slice of white sponge cake, complete with frosting and the sauce dripped artfully on the plate. Where's the milk, I thought, but maybe it was just made with milk, like delis that have special bagels that are called egg bagels. I didn't notice that they served it to me with a spoon until afterward. And let me stress again, this cake slice stood tall, like sponge cake should, but not sponge cake soaked in milk. I took a bite and couldn't get past it--it was SOAKED--and enjoyed probably the best restaurant dessert I've ever experienced since Lambert's in Taos, New Mexico. It's just milk-soaked cake, for heaven's sake, but you would never know it to look at it. How does the milk stay in a slice that tall and upright?

I was licking the spoon in the ultimate compliment of satisfaction when the bus boy approached me, struck by my relishment of the dessert. "Did you enjoy that?" he said with a smile as he took the plate, and I gushed over it--"I could have that for breakfast every day." The whole meal had been wonderful, but that dessert, so soft and light and miraculous, and he could see my passion for food and told me all about how the chef was going to rotate the prix fixe menu to a new one every two weeks. I normally don't go in there that often, but the cake and his appreciation of my appreciation sold me.

Ah, love in a miracle.

How Do You Solve a Problem Like Julia?

2010-01-06T19:53:00.000-08:00

Here it is!

Okay, again, just a refresher...I'm not going to cook everything in these books in a year. And I won't blog on it every day. Hell, some of this stuff frightens me. There are at least two things in the kitchen I know from my past that I stink at, and they are gravy and bread, and there is a challenge of all kinds of pastry in here. Yikes.

One of these recipes, she writes, thumbing through, is three pages long. Double yikes.

And I wonder where on earth I find a mattress needle?

But this is a wonder to skim...hark! A recipe for lamb's brains...oh dear Lord...

Eat on, dear reader...

An Adjustment

2010-01-06T19:44:00.000-08:00

Ok, this may make me some enemies.

*Deep breath.*

I have a new BlackBerry that I love, and the new BlackBerry has a new version of Facebook that I love. It's all wonderful.

*Another deep breath.*

But here's the problem...I wish I could see good stuff on Facebook, like status messages...or writings on walls...

Don't get me wrong--I am very proud of everyone who has a cafe and a farm and mob and whatever everyone belongs to. I know it's fun. But I would rather read a status message. The updates of the farms and cafes and mobs and such is like logging on to the New York Times and getting...um...the Examiner, maybe.

There, I said it. I'm sorry. Carry on...I'm going to play with the settings and see what I can do to filter to the good stuff. :)

(P.S.--I found it...on both the laptop and the BlackBerry. Now I can curl up with my status messages and you folks go grow and cook and kill, um, people, I guess... :/

Rubbing Elbows

2010-01-06T19:34:00.000-08:00

So a couple of weeks back I wrote in here about my New Year's Resolution and the blog that helped me set up my resolutions this year...and today the author of that blog has a book that is #2 on the New York Times bestseller list! The fact that she has commented on my blog makes me feel important just knowing that she reads my stuff, and, as a fellow writer, I'm so excited that the author that I follow on my home page (er, the first site that pops up when I log on the internet, if that is a better explanation) is so successful.

I have to say that I completely admire Gretchen's style--her humility and curiousity about her subject matter make her observations real to me. As I mentioned when I talked about the devotionals a little while back, I can add her to the soup, too, and did tonight when I added her book to the Kindle.

Her site, my friends...and her book. Congratulations, fellow writer, and take a peek, dear readers...

Chemistry Set

2010-01-03T06:20:00.000-08:00

Suffering a renewed passion in cooking lately, due to a whole list of enablers:

My father sent me a NuWave for Christmas. I know that no one in the Food Network cooks with this thing, but it makes me far less scared of large cuts or whole parts of meat
Julie & Julia--the movie, the book, the phenomenon. As a thank you gift for cat-sitting I am receiving Julia's two-volume cookbook--and while I'm not so ambitious as Julie Powell to squeeze all of the recipes into one year, I'm daring enough to make them a regular appearance
The meat department at Andronico's. The one in the Inner Sunset has RABBIT, for Pete's sake. Time to go wild...
Food Network--while I can't watch it all day like I used to, I can watch with acute interest when they cook some strange and wonderful blends, and then get the recipes on-line.

With all of these things in my chemistry set and a desire to eat healthier, is it any wonder that I should look forward to this year?